


time and rhythm

by rememberhow



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura & Shiro (Voltron) Friendship, Allura (Voltron) Lives, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Past Curtis/Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Has Anxiety, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Slow Burn, brief descriptions of anal sex, but since i'm bad with pov it really fluctuates between shiro's and keith's pov, no matter how many times i change or rearrange the tags they're always published out of order., picks up after s8 except:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2020-09-02 06:50:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20271724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rememberhow/pseuds/rememberhow
Summary: The Captain had recognized him the moment he stepped into the bridge. He didn’t look the same as the last time the Captain had seen him—older, and something else. But then again, he had spent the past six years trying to place as much cosmic distance between himself and Takashi Shirogane as possible. Now, he stared into eyes he had hoped never to see again.It's been seven years since Voltron and the Atlas' battle with Honerva, six since Keith Kogane fled Earth in the black lion for Daibazaal, taking with him only Kosmo and a few belongings. And outside of Earth's solar system, Keith has built a life for himself—rising through the ranks of the Blade of Marmora and now known as Captain Kogane, he flies theKoz'korenship through deep space and continues the relief effort with a crew of his own. Keith's been avoiding Takashi Shirogane for years until they're brought face to face when Shiro comes crashing landing back into his life in the form of a shuttle breaching his ship.in other words, keith stopped giving a shit about shiro when shiro made it abundantly clear that the abyss between them was unbridgeable.





	1. Chapter 1

The _Koz’koren_ moved steadily through Uiak II, a solar system part of the vast Xorot galaxy and forty-seven thousand lightyears away from Daibazaal. She was to land on planet Joqar, where a small faction of young and eager Galrans had assembled to join the Blade and aid in the spreading relief missions. Since they were relatively new to the organization, the group needed to undergo training and learn essential Marmorite protocol, so _Koz’koren_ would drop off an experienced Blades member to stay with them for six phoebs. It was nothing urgent, though—most planets in the solar system were in the final stages of recovery, and the ship paced itself at a leisurely cruise. 

“How long until we break exosphere?” 

The Captain stood at the helm with his hands crossed behind his back, his stance assertive as he calmly observed the distant nebulas clouding over expansive black infinity. He wore traditional Marmorite fighting dress and gear, clad in royal blue pauldrons and a skirt that draped down to his knees. His obsidian hair was braided tightly back against the nape of his neck. It’d been a while since he cut it—he didn’t see a reason to—and it reached nearly his waist now. 

“Less than a varga, Captain,” a female voice responded from her seat at the front of the bridge “Shall we speed things up?” 

He shook his head. “At our rate we’ll still be early. Don’t want to give ‘em too much of a scare, do we?” 

“You know the Blade values punctuality,” she countered, twisting and tipping her head down to cast a knowing glance at her Captain. This was the epitome of their relationship—back and forth banter that could sometimes result in a playful shove on the shoulder, or, in one case, full on sparring. But here, they were Commander and Captain, and capped the bickering with a firm nod from the Captain. The Commander turned back to the controls with a roll of her eyes. 

She squinted at her screen. Her eyes widened. 

“Captain, there’s been a—” 

The ship shook violently. There was an ear-piercing sound of metal against metal. It felt like the room was being dragged down, maybe the entire ship was— 

“What’s happening?” the Captain shouted over the noise, holding onto the control panel in front of him. “Runa!” 

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think there’s been a breach!” she called back, hands flying rapidly over her keypad. “Stern side!” she determined. 

Abruptly, the shaking stopped, and with it so did the scraping noise. _Koz’koren_ righted itself and continued flying normally before the Commander stopped the cruiser from moving any further so they could investigate the sudden source of impact. 

“Calling hangar sentries now,” another crew member said. “Shit, their comms are off. But how—?” 

The bridge door slid open. 

In a split second, everyone in the three-man bridge crew stood with their masks activated and, including the Captain himself, had their pistols pointed at the door and other hand on the hilts of their blades. 

Out emerged two figures. The Captain tightened his grip on his gun, finger applying the slightest pressure to the trigger. “Don’t move!” he barked at the intruders. “_Nehyb sa!_” 

The first person was small and relatively thin, dressed in dark gray armor the bridge recognized to belong to the hangar defense line. All eyes shifted to the second, significantly larger man who towered over nearly everyone in the room. Wearing a white and gray flight suit with flecks of orange, his face was helmeted and he carried no visible weapons on him. There was a surprising empty space between his right shoulder and forearm where his upper arm should have been. His right hand, wrapped tightly around the guard’s neck, looked like a separate mechanism, and it glowed a soft blue—_Altean_. 

Beneath the Captain’s mask, his mouth went dry. 

Unintentionally, his mask deactivated. 

“Bad time?” the tall man huffed. His voice was too playful, too nonchalant, for a person with bad intentions. Behind his reflective visor, he swept his eyes across the room until they landed on the man in the centre of it. Clad in senior Marmorite dress, he looked taller, and more intimidating—maybe it came with the Captain status. Icy violet eyes seared into the intruder’s as they locked gazes. 

“I’m sorry,” the sentry sputtered, hands grappling uselessly at the robotic fingers around his throat, “I tried to stop him, but he knocked everyone else out—” 

“Let him go,” the Captain growled, with newfound rage. 

The man obeyed, releasing his iron grip and letting the guard fall to his knees, gasping. With all pistols aimed at him, he stepped forward until he was mere feet away from the Captain. On the raised helm, the Captain was eye-level with the intruder. 

“Runa, Yaikil, stand down,” he demanded of his crew. 

“Sir—” 

“_I command you to stand down_.” Though they didn’t understand, the Captain’s crew placed the utmost trust in him, and followed his demand. 

The Captain shoved his pistol back into his belt at the same time that he unsheathed his blade and held it at arm’s length, pointed straight at the man’s chin. He would never admit it out loud, but right now, he trusted himself more with his blade than a weapon full of bullets. The man glanced down at the sword, studying the cool purple light that radiated off of what looked like some sort of insignia. Masked by his helmet, he smirked. 

“_Unhelmet yourself_,” seethed the Captain. His sword arm didn’t waver. 

The man laughed sharply, throwing his head back as he removed his helmet and dropped it to the floor, heedless to how it rolled off sideways, revealing a head of white hair and a face recognizable across the universe. Behind him, the Captain heard the other crew members gasp, but his own face was expressionless. The Captain had recognized him the moment he stepped into the bridge. He didn’t look the same as the last time the Captain had seen him—older, and something else. But then again, he had spent the past six years trying to place as much cosmic distance between himself and Takashi Shirogane as possible. Now, he stared into eyes he had hoped never to see again. 

Slowly, he lowered the blade to his side and placed it back in its scabbard. “Is it true?” His voice was guttural. “Did you knock the hangar sentries out?” 

“_Ke-e-eith_,” Shiro said, tone dipping near playful. He raised a brow. “That’s no way to greet a guest.” 

The Captain immediately retaliated. He shoved an elbow into Shiro’s chest, making him stumble backwards in surprise. “_You do not_,” Keith snarled, “_get to say my name_. Answer my question.” 

Shiro studied the venom in his voice for a moment, toying around with different responses in his mind before settling on one. He scoffed. “Some guards they are, huh? Didn’t take much for them to see stars spinning.” 

“Oh, you fucker,” Keith said with a biting laugh and shake of his head. He launched himself off the platform straight at Shiro, tackling him to the ground. 

Shiro landed on his back with a grunt. Realizing what was happening, he wrapped his legs around Keith’s waist and thrust him sideways, and, climbing over him, pinned both his arms down. 

“I don’t want to fight,” he said, trying to meet Keith’s eyes. For the first time, there was a hint of resignation in his voice. “Keith, I just want to talk—” 

_Talk? You’ve had six years to talk_. He could feel it everywhere. Anger. It bubbled under his skin, coursed through his blood and presented itself through a racing pulse. It spread in his chest like wildfire and rose to his throat, found his eyes, infiltrated his mind. _You have no right_, he kept thinking. He could have meant his fury, or Shiro. _You have no right._

He kicked a knee up and hit Shiro’s stomach. Keith was stronger than before, Shiro had the presence of mind to realize. Once he was forced to pull back and released one hand from where it was curled around Keith’s bicep, it was too late. An arm came swinging at him before he could register what was happening. Keith punched him straight across the face. 

Six years did a lot. Saw a lot. Of damage, of healing. Of moving on and shoving past. 

The unexpected amount of impact that came with Keith’s fist sent Shiro flying. He skidded backward and crashed into the wall. Shiro slumped to the side, keeping himself upright by planting his robotic hand on the ground while his left hand went to touch his throbbing cheek. 

“They have families, you know,” Keith shouted. Quicker than should have been possible, he stood up and came charging at Shiro again. There was nowhere to run and he truly didn’t want to fight anymore. 

Shiro raised a robotic arm up to shield his face. Then, he felt himself being lifted off the floor. 

With one hand Keith held him by the collar, knuckles whitening around the charcoal metal. “You,” Keith spat, “don’t just get to crash land in my ship. You don’t get to break in and hurt _my_ crew. Do you really believe that just because your name is Takashi Shirogane I’ll welcome you with open arms?” 

The laugh that came out of Keith’s throat was cold, and scarily genuine. “You’ve got some fucking nerve.” 

“What’s going on?” 

Keith turned, and so did Runa and Yaikil. The woman who entered the room had the whole Blades ensemble on. She rubbed at her eyes. “The impact woke me up,” she began to explain, albeit a bit sheepishly, before she saw the other man. “Captain Shirogane?” she said in disbelief. She slanted her amber eyes at Keith, who dropped Shiro with a disgruntled noise and straightened. “What… what happened?” 

Shiro coughed, hands pressed against his knees before he stood up beside Keith and gave the new addition an acknowledging nod. “Hello, Acxa,” he managed awkwardly, offering a meager smile in her direction. 

“It’s…” she cleared her throat. “It’s Commander Acxa, now. Actually.” 

“He crashed his shuttle into our hangar,” Keith said through teeth. “And then he nearly killed the sentries.” 

“Oh, come on, you’re flattering me,” Shiro interjected, but he grew nervous at the way Acxa tensed up. “I just gave them a little… show.” 

“_He carried out a severe assault on our ship and crew_,” Keith said. “He had no permission to land on or enter our ship.” 

“What do you want us to do, Captain?” It was Yaikil who spoke. Though he had tucked his gun away, he continued to watch Shiro warily. 

Keith moved around Shiro and slowly climbed the steps to the raised helm. He placed his hands on the controls. “Take the prisoner to the holding cell,” he said. He kept his eyes trained on the endless stretch of distant stars and moons. “Lock him up.” 

He didn’t see Shiro flinch as the words came out of his mouth. 

He didn’t see the hangar guard, now risen, producing metal cuffs and securing them around Shiro’s wrists. He didn’t see how Shiro let him. 

“I’ll join Ojren,” Yaikil said promptly, his guard still up, and he left to watch over the two men as Ojren led Shiro out of the bridge and towards their prison cell. Out of sight. 

Once he heard the sound of the door sliding shut, Keith released a heavy breath of air. He leaned, slightly, on the panel in front of him for support. He closed his eyes. 

“Keith?” Acxa sounded concerned behind him. He ignored her. 

“Runa, start for planet Joqar.” He ground the words out of his mouth as the Commander obediently returned to her seat and gripped the joystick. 

Keith snapped his eyes open. Rolled his shoulders back. Adopted the posture of a soldier. He clenched his jaw and muttered scathingly, “We’re late.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [twitter](https://twitter.com/moondashing)
> 
> \- some things might be inaccurate because i can't write sci fi for shit and i haven't rewatched voltron so i'm mostly going off of what i remember and wikia pages
> 
> \- this fic is ongoing but there's a fair chance i won't finish it because i rarely finish anything. who knows though it's been pretty fun to write so far and i really don't want to add it to my garbage heap of 192048021 other abandoned fics!  



	2. Chapter 2

He was deeply appreciative of the solace the silence of his room provided. 

Keith was itching to just rip all his gear and armor off, toss his blade to the side and collapse against the bed. To wake up to the beautiful Joqari morning and find that this had all been a strange and terrible nightmare. 

It was, but it was also real life. 

Standing in front of his closed door, Keith continued to stare at his room. _His_ room. Usually, there would be absolutely nothing to look at. From the Castle of Lions to the Atlas, he’d always kept his quarters baren and impeccably neat, save for his blade, jacket, and uniform. It was one of the many ways how the hasty _get a move on_ of foster care shaped him—keep your essentials and forget about the luxury of having anything else. The only instance he could recall when he’d gone out of his way to ‘decorate’ a space was after he hopped on a motorcycle in the dead of night and sped off into the desert, finding a shack he’d call home for the next year. His walls, and practically every other surface in the house, had been strewn with maps and graphs, notes, photos. 

But back then, it was for a different reason. 

And his reason would come back to him. In a Galra escape pod, hurtling down to the dusty mountain ranges of Earth at terminal velocity. 

Then, a massive blue lion would send him, and the man who made headlines as a pilot who wasn’t dead after all, and the three people he would become impossibly close to falling through a wormhole and into the guidance of a selfless, brave princess and her courageous advisor. And together they’d be thrown into the rampage of genocide and war. Of what seemed like never-ending loss, and pain, and destruction. It would be a time when those brief moments of peace, or even joy—anything from piling up on each other’s laps in the Castle common room after training, much to the more skittish ones’ chagrin, or starting food goo fights in the commissary, or just being in each other’s presence—were the most cherished form of reprieve from the ruthlessness of the expanding Galran empire. 

Power would inevitably shift from one tyrant to the next. 

Keith should have known. Should have seen it earlier. When it started, when the war entered the homefront. When Shiro floated further and further away with no weight grounding him to Keith’s orbit, out of reach even though he was right there. 

When Honerva sacrificed herself and he was left with a lifetime to deal with the chasm that yawned between them. 

The funny thing was, when he had woken up that night with his decision already made, he considered just leaving Earth in Black and not telling anyone. He immediately chided himself for the thought—the least he owed his family and the paladins was a goodbye. 

As was expected, Hunk was beside himself with shock, whereas Pidge just worried for his mental state. When the comms system finally reached Altea, he thought he heard Allura and Lance hesitate before telling Keith that they would support him no matter what, and that if he thought this was right, then it was. 

Even Kolivan’s poker face broke when Keith told him of his plans, said that it would be a bigger change than Keith could anticipate. Krolia seemed to be the only one to understand. She’d warned him that the climate there was a lot drier, and bluntly told him his Galran was seriously rusty, but that was it. She helped him pack the night before he was supposed to leave—although truthfully there really wasn’t much he was going to bring. 

He had felt sick going to bed that night. Actually, he’d been feeling sick for the past week, and he kept second guessing himself. But he shoved that doubt back down into his stomach whenever it made its unbidden appearance—he had made his decision. He’d wondered if he’d feel this way forever. 

The next morning, he bid farewell to a few close Garrison members and received a tearful goodbye from Pidge and Hunk. Ten hours later, four giant mechatronic paws touched down on rocky red soil, and he stepped out of Black, felt the Daibazaal wind whip his hair into messy tendrils clouding his head like dark fog. 

Shiro gave him a lifetime. And he took it, didn’t he? Keith was here now. 

His room wasn’t empty. 

He slung his scabbard and belt off first. Next, he removed his gloves and gauntlets, following up with his pauldrons from where they met the rest of the uniform, before unwrapping the lightweight kevlar fabric that folded around his back to his waist. He bent down to take off his knee guards and steel-toe heels. Then, reaching behind his head, he unzipped the black bodysuit that clung to nearly every inch of his skin below the neck. 

Keith padded over to the closet and haphazardly sorted all the uniform parts and gear, except his blade, which he had dropped on the nightstand. He slipped on a white pyjama shirt and pants that were probably too long, and finally collapsed onto the bed. He wanted sleep to take him far, far away, but of course—maybe it was because he hadn’t bothered with the lights—sleep never came close. 

He shifted. There was a framed photo of his mother, Kolivan, and himself on his nightstand. They were all smiling. Keith opened the bottom drawer and fumbled around until he found what he was looking for—a small, rectangular box, with long earbuds soldered into a jack on one side. Keith sat up, and, squishing the earbuds into his ears, pressed the only button on the thing. 

He closed his eyes. 

It didn’t work like it used to. 

As in, the machine worked, but it didn’t work on _him_. Anymore. 

He yanked them out of his ears and threw the box to the foot of his bed. “Why the hell are you here?” he said, out loud, and without an audience, he let his pitch rise desperate and shrill. “What do you want me to do with _that_?” 

He needed a fucking coffee. 


	3. Chapter 3

Keith, maybe a little bleary with exhaustion, pressed his palm against the identification pad. The door opened with a soft _chhhh_ as the pressure in the room dropped. It was past midnight, and his walk to the common room was quiet. No one else should have been awake at this time. 

“Oh, come on,” Keith said with a resounding sigh. 

Acxa stood at the back counter of the shared lounge, doing something with the coffee machine. Having removed her armor, instead she wore one of Veronica’s old Garrison jackets. 

“You’re up late,” she said, although she didn’t turn around, continuing her tinkering. The coffee machine was basically the only kitchen appliance they ever used—no one in the _Koz’koren_ crew was cuisine savvy. Hunk had forced a Galran recipe book into Keith’s arms before he left Earth, which he hadn’t mustered the culinary confidence to open yet, but promised himself he’d try soon. 

“It’s not broken again, is it?” 

She stuck her face closer to it. “I think it is.” 

“Fuck.” He spun on his heel and turned to leave, not bothering to attempt fixing the machine, or ask her why she was here, too. 

“Keith.” Now, she had stood up straight. The seriousness in her voice made him stop in his tracks. If he really wanted to, he could keep going, just walk out on her. Piss her off even more. But he stopped. 

“Keith,” Acxa said again to his back. “I know you’re not okay.” 

He chuckled, lowering his head. “It doesn’t matter if I’m okay or not. We’ve got a mission to fulfill, people to help.” He turned, now, his nose twitching with anger creeping up in throat again. “I didn’t do all this,” he said, gesturing wildly around him, “to have one—_jackass_ ruin everything.” 

She said nothing. She listened to him pensively. 

“We’re sending him away first thing tomorrow. Get someone to fix his shuttle or find him a new one—launch him into outer fucking space if you have to. I don’t care. I want him _gone_.” 

“Okay,” Acxa said, nodding. If Keith was surprised at how quickly she agreed, he didn’t let it show. “I’ll do my best, Captain.” 

He let his shoulders drop a little. They stood there for a few more seconds, Acxa’s hard, amber eyes boring into his skull. 

She slanted her gaze further, pupils constricted. “You taught me about second chances, Keith,” she said, finally, no mercy in her tone. “You were one of the first people who actually trusted me.” Then her blue brows softened. “I know you have no reason to trust Shiro right now. And I don’t know him very well, but I do know that he never meant to hurt you.” 

His stomach flipped. Keith opened his mouth. 

“Don’t say anything,” Acxa said quickly. She walked across the room until she was beside Keith and facing the door. She found his shoulder and gave it a short squeeze. “I know you’ll do the right thing, Keith.” 

There it was again. 

People always told him he would do the right thing. That whatever choices the future held would be made carefully, thoughtfully. As if he could do no wrong. 

_But that’s not how the world works_, he thought. _Sometimes we consciously do the wrong thing._

Keith swallowed as the door opened for him, and he left Acxa in the common room. 

No coffee. Fine. He’d just catch the few hours of sleep that he could, and focus on the day ahead. He started the short walk back to his room. 

Except there was the sound of muffled gasps echoing through the halls. 

The _Koz’koren_ wasn’t a large ship. She wasn’t nearly as large as Black, although she did have a lot more interior surface area for living and training. Keith quickened his pace, worry growing in him. “Yaikil?” he called, now breaking into a jog. “Yaikil, are you—” 

He skidded to a stop. 

He was at the ship’s sole holding cell, which almost hadn’t even been included in the final design until Yaikil pressed on adamantly about it. It was a small space, meant to hold only one prisoner, with a bench attached to the wall and secured by a floor-to-ceiling particle barrier. 

On the floor, Shiro was shaking on his hands and knees, heaving desperately for air. Under sweat-slicked hair, his frantic eyes didn’t see Keith, didn’t see anything, really, as they scurried all over the place. The barrier acted as a one-way mirror of sorts, except that one side was like a blackout curtain—while Keith could see into the cell perfectly, Shiro was trapped in a box of darkness. And it was consuming him. 

Keith slammed his hand against the identification scanner. 

The particle barrier came down at once, and so did Keith—he fell to the floor, gathering Shiro in his arms, lifting him off the floor. “Shiro—” 

Something came rushing back, hitting him with staggering force. It was all too familiar. The moment Keith heard the name escape his lips, he saw what was happening, and as quickly as he had scooped him up he flung Shiro off him, scrambling backwards out of the cell and into the hallway until his shoulders met the wall. 

Shiro’s back was pressed against the side of the bench now, his head hung back and neck exposed. His body still shook, but his mismatched breaths were less ragged and clenched hands relaxed slightly. He blinked, feeling something tickle his face, his eyes. Light. 

He wasn’t in the dark anymore. 

He lowered his head and, panting, looked straight at the man who’d deactivated the blue forcefield. 

Keith was frozen in place. 

He had just voluntarily touched Shiro for the first time in years, said his name with genuine distress, felt a fear that only Shiro could ignite— 

And he couldn’t control it. He hadn’t seen his palm smash against the identification pad. The corridor had melted away along with everything else. In the moment all that he could see, hear, think was Shiro, Shiro, Shiro. 

“Keith?” 

Shiro snapped him out of his daze. Shiro had said his name his name. 

“Keith?” 

Keith swallowed nothing. Shiro was still on the floor with his knees close to his chest, looking up almost quizzically at Keith, all white hair that gleamed violet from the faint hallway light. A thin sheen of sweat coated his forehead. For a split second, Keith wondered if it really had been six years since they’d last seen each other. It was that unrecognizable look in his silver, silver eyes that, when Keith’s eventually met them, confirmed that it had. 

Keith tried to take another step backward, as if the metal walls would let him. 

So he did what he always did best. He spun and ran. Sprinting down the corridor, he didn’t care if this route didn’t lead to his room, and as Shiro called after him, he couldn’t help thinking that even with time, the universe would never be right. 


	4. Chapter 4

_Two months into his move to Daibazaal, Keith inhabits an only slightly dilapidated apartment in an even older district, where most of the other residents are displaced refugees. He spends most of his time helping out at the food bank with a few local Blades, or at the orphanage, where the children pepper him with space questions and he tries his best to give semi-informative answers._

_There’s a knock on his door one morning, when the surrounding morning stars had just risen._

_“Just a second, Aej!” he calls, vision foggy with sleep. He kicks the blanket off of him and rolls off the mattress onto the hard floor, where he locates a stray t-shirt and pair of sweatpants, both of which he throws on. Light from Tgalv, the star at the centre of Daibazaal’s solar system, filters through his dirty windows weakly, casting an orangey hue over his room. Well, the only room in the apartment, actually._

_Keith pads his way over to the door. He drags a hand over his face in an attempt to wake himself up. His neighbour, an elderly Galran woman named Aejul, has a penchant for banging on his door in the morning whenever her shower leaks, which is nearly everyday. He opens it._

_“Did you really have to choose the worst possible neighbourhood to live in?”_

_His eyes open wide with surprise. In his royal Altean court uniform, he couldn’t look more recognizable— or out of place. “_Lance?_”_

_“Hey, mullethead,” Lance mutters, shoving his way into the apartment. Distaste immediately strikes his face and he pulls his blue cape closer to him. He glances at the boxes covering the brick floor, the lack of any real furniture save for the bare mattress with a blanket spilling over onto the ground. “Oh, God, Keith, you really let yourself go…”_

_Keith closes the door, thinking he might be hallucinating. He looks over his shoulder and blinks hard. Lance is still there. He kicks Lance on the calf._

_“Hey!” Lance turns. “What was that for?”_

_“Excuse me?” Keith screeches. “You just walked into my apartment. At 4 a.m. in the morning. _Without even calling ahead of time to tell me you were coming._ What are you doing here?”_

_“The flight here was fine, thanks for asking,” Lance grumbles. He steps over a tiny black box on the floor, and bends over to poke at it. “You’ve got junk everywhere. What is this thing?”_

_“Don’t touch that,” Keith snaps. “Don’t touch anything. Look, just—” he sighs, pinches the space between his brows. “Sit.”_

_“… Where?”_

_“The floor, genius,” Keith practically barks. So he does, maneuvering around dozens of unopened boxes and crates and plopping down near the window on the cold floor. He folds his long limbs into a cross-legged position. Keith crosses the room to the makeshift kitchen, which is just a hot plate and kettle plugged into the wall. Lance watches as he picks up the kettle and finds two nearby cups, pours water into both of them. Then he joins Lance on the floor._

_Keith passes him one of the cups, leaning back against the wall under the window. They are in the shade, Tgalv’s light just missing the spot where they sit. He closes his eyes, feels the warm breeze flow into his apartment and envelop him in that earthy smell of Daibazaal._

_“Allura sent you to check on me, didn’t she?”_

_“What?” Lance spits out water as his voice grows shrill in incredulity, clearly offended. He fumbles around for the right words. “Wh—how could you suggest such a thing? You don’t think I—I care about you? We’re bros, right? Bros see each other from time to time, d—don’t they?”_

_Keith opens his eyes to stare, deadpan, at him._

_Lance’s shoulders fall. “Okay,” he sighs. “You caught me. She sent me here. But I’m concerned, too, Keith. We all are.”_

_A dark laugh blooms from Keith’s chest. “Please, tell everyone to stop wasting their time fretting about one dumb Galran. And you too, Lance. Stop,” he presses, “worrying.”_

_“You’re not one dumb Galran,” Lance says. “You’re _our_ dumb Galran.”_

_He doesn’t say anything. Raises the cup to his lips and lets cool water slide down his throat. “I’m fine,” he says quietly, staring straight ahead._

_“Your place is cluttered,” Lance points out. “And you’re not a messy person, not when it comes to your living space.”_

_“Oh, no,” Keith says, “these boxes aren’t mine. They’re full of non-perishables and freeze-dried food. We—some other Blades and I help hand them out three times a movement.”_

_Lance’s brow furrows. “And they’re just here… in your apartment?”_

_Keith shrugs. “We needed somewhere safe to store them. I offered my place, and…”_

_“Somewhere safe?” he questions._

_“A lot of buildings are still undergoing reconstruction,” Keith explains. “And there are regular landslides in many districts. The Coalition officials here said it has something to do with the quintessence of the trans-reality comet. Kind of like aftershock. They say it’ll subside within the next three phoebs, though.”_

_“Quiznak, no wonder this planet still looks like a mess,” Lance says. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have sent more relief forces here.”_

_Keith shakes his head. “It’s the reaction you’re giving. That’s precisely why.”_

_“Huh?”_

_He gives a soft chuckle, sets the water down beside him. “You don’t get it, Lance. The people of Daibazaal have this… incredible sense of community. When everyone’s not being painfully independent, they rely on each other. They don’t want help from, well, for lack of a better term, outsiders. They’re doing just fine on their own.”_

_Lance doesn’t point out how Keith says _they_ instead of we._

_He just sighs. He stares at a loose thread on the blouse he’s wearing. They sit in silence for a while. Watch dust float around in the morning light._

_Keith isn’t going to ask. He knows Lance will speak up of his own volition soon enough._

_“Must be nice,” Lance says almost dreamily. There it is. “Going around and helping all these people. I know it’s not easy, but it must be better than being stuck in a palace all day, attending diplomatic _luncheons_.” His nose scrunches up at the word. “God, it sounds even worse when I say it out loud.”_

_“Well, you are King Consort. It’s what you signed up for, isn’t it?” _

_Lance half-nods. “Yeah. But I just miss it, you know? The action. The hustle-bustle of… of…”_

War_, Keith thinks. “You’re helping people, too,” he says, instead. “You just don’t see the immediate effects. But you’re bringing so many people together, ministers and leaders and officials with so many differences that you can somehow get them all to embrace.”_

_Lance listens to this. He knows Keith is trying to make him feel better, which he’s grateful for, but sometimes it’s still hard to accept that these are their lives now._

_Another moment of quiet passes before one of them speaks again._

_“Is Allura well?”_

_Lance nods. “She and Coran spend a lot of time outside with the other Alteans, overseeing new settlements and everything. They're probably out more than they should be,” Lance admits, drawing circles with his finger on the floor, “but I don’t say anything. She just got her home back, you know?”_

_“She deserves to be happy,” Keith agrees. He pauses. “Have you, uh,” he stumbles, “checked in with Pidge or Hunk recently?”_

_“No,” Lance says plaintively with a shake of his head. “I hardly take trips to Earth anymore, and when I do I try to spend most of it with my family.” There’s a bit of guilt seeping into his words. “Last I heard Pidge’s got a whole army of robots in the works, and Hunk’s trying to convince her to integrate cooking abilities into their code.”_

_Keith cracks a smile at that, but he feels a pang of sadness, too. It’s not that he wishes he were with them, not because it would make him less lonely. Whether he was caught up in the duo’s antics back on Earth or trying to be useful at the Garrison by testing simulations and following all other orders thrown at him, or here, now, on planet Daibazaal—it’s the realization that wherever he is, he will always be that. Alone. No matter how hard he tries to shake the feeling off him, it clings. What he thought used to be a separate entity had now become a part of him, its fangs and claws and everything too deep in his skin._

_He wills himself to think of something else. Boxy shadows sway across the floor. They talk a bit more, Lance catching him up on everything he missed on Altea and on Earth, while skirting around one topic._

_“When do you leave?” Keith asks._

_“Now.” Lance rises, smoothing his rumpled uniform over as Keith turns to look at him. “Yeah, I know,” Lance says. “Allura and I’ve got another meeting this afternoon with some Olkari.”_

_“Oh,” Keith nods in understanding, standing up, too. “Did you, uh, take Red over here?”_

_“Yep,” Lance grins. “Any chance to fly her nowadays I get I’ll take. Why?”_

_“This might sound stupid…” Keith scratches the back of his neck. “... but can I see her? It’s just been a really long time, and I… it’d be nice if I could, uh... ”_

_“Of course,” Lance says, equal parts earnest and cool. “She’ll probably be excited to see her old paladin.”_

_Keith offers as meaningful a smile as he can muster. He grabs a ring of keys and they head out of his apartment and down a rickety set of winding stairs out onto the road. There are clusters of other worn down buildings stretching through the street, but other than that it’s empty at this time of day. In the summer season, the air is warm and for the most part, calm. Sometimes, without warning the wind picks up grains of red and gray sand, which annoys the hell out of Lance and causes him to perpetually squint._

_The sky is beginning to lighten, however, solid ochre and streaks of clouds trailing downward past the horizon. Tgalv can now be seen above most buildings, but its four sister stars—two on either side—hang low in the distant sky. They walk in silence along the dusty road, Keith trailing behind Lance—he trusts the former red paladin will remember where he parked his lion._

_Lance comes to a halt. “Here,” he says. They’ve arrived at a barren field of crumbly, red soil, flanked by an outcropping of bedrock. In the middle of the field Red sits. She is perfectly poised. Her amber eyes don’t glow, staring straight ahead glassily._

_“Hey, girl,” Lance greets, though he sounds rather glum about it. He walks down a small hill towards his lion. Keith, shoving his hands in his pockets, can’t do anything but follow._

_Lance stops again when he reaches her left leg. He gives it a solid pat._

_Keith stares up at her. From down here, it looks like there is a halo of golden light glowing around her head._

_“D’you ever wonder if they get lonely?” Lance wonders aloud. Keith knows what he’s talking about immediately. “I mean, sure, we take them out for joy rides and stuff, but other than that they just spend all their days in a dark hangar. You think they’re sad?”_

_“I,” he says, trying to sound reassuring, “I would think they would understand.”_

_Maybe he says it to reassure himself._

_Lance gazes up at Red and smiles small, lets out a puff of air through his nose. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, they probably do.”_

_Keith can’t help feeling a horrible mix of isolation—_I’m going to be alone forever_—and fear—_something bad is about to happen_—and hollowness—_I can’t feel anything at all. 

_He doesn’t know what to call it. When it will end. If it is real. If it can be suppressed any further._

_“Hey, Keith?”_

_He closes his eyes. Feels the light penetrate through._

_“Before I go? Tell me something.”_

_He wishes it could blind him._

_“Tell me you’re okay.”_

_Or take him._

_“Don’t lie to yourself.”_

_Or both._

_“Lie to me.”_

_“What?” He opens his eyes, turns to Lance._

_“Lie to me, Keith, and tell me you’re okay.”_

_Keith stares at him. Breathes and stares at him and breathes. Lance’s blue eyes are set with intent._

_Keith swallows._

_“Do you want to go home?” Lance says, barely audible._

_What?_

_“_Keith? Keith!_”_

_He blinks and shakes his head. Lance is waving his hand millimetres away from his face. Keith shoves it away. “Dude, are you okay?”_

_“W—what did you just say?” Keith stammers._

_“I asked if you’re okay,” Lance says, worried. “_Are_ you okay?”_

_“I—I am,” he says. “I’m okay. Look,” he adds hastily, “you should get going. Don’t want to keep your queen waiting.”_

_“Uh-huh,” he says dubiously. “Take care of yourself, okay, Keith?”_

_“Yeah, I will. Give Allura my best.”_

_He watches as Red lowers her head, watches Lance climb into her mouth and keep walking forward until he can’t be seen anymore. Red’s jaw locks in place. She stands on all fours and stretches her body. Craning her neck up to the heavens, she lets out a thunderous roar._

_Keith watches, feels the cool reverberated wind from her call blast in his face. Then, Lance launches her into the air, four paws no longer touching the soil. The backside of her body is closer to the ground than the front, and her tail, swishing back and forth, lightly grazes the field. Keith’s hair whips in front of his face. She stays hovering for a moment longer, seemingly looking at Keith, before Lance pulls a lever back and she turns around and rockets up and away, into the Daibazaal sky._

_Soon, she’s just a sparkling speck, and then a second later she’s gone._

_The air is still again. He moves a stray lock of black hair back._

_He begins the quiet trek home. And something in him yearns for more—more than this._

_He fled to Daibazaal to escape. To search for some sense of belonging, somewhere. The planet is beautiful, and the people are kind to him. They treat him not as a paladin of Voltron, but as a person, which he is intensely grateful for. He lives the simple life he wants and spends his time doing good deeds._

_But there is a pit in his chest, and even if it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t shrink, either._

_His body makes an instinctive towards two tall sand-colored buildings. He lets his feet lead him through the shadowy alleyway, lets his body soak in the dark dampness._

_Keith stops at a sturdy metal door, bolted up and down with various locks. He takes the ring of keys out of his pocket and, one by one, works them into the locks._

_Keith presses his shoulder against the heavy door, and with one hand wrenching the handle pushes it open with his body weight._

_He steps into the room, onto the top of the metal staircase that extends into a catwalk._

_Feebly, light pours in from the north strip of windows close to the ceiling, and particles of dust float freely in the spotlight. The trusses that support the ceiling are starting to rust. It’s a large warehouse space in the basement of the building, rented to Keith for a monthly fee he barely manages to pay off._

_She sits in the centre of it, covered by an enormous, heavy tarpaulin._

_Keith quickly makes his way down the steps. As he gets closer, he becomes more tentative._

_He slowly comes to a stop once they are a metre apart._

_“Hey,” he breathes out shakily._

_Keith's arm stretches out, swiping a thumb over the yellowing tarpaulin canvas that used to be white. It coats his finger in dust._

_He releases a shuddering exhale as he falls to his knees in surrender. The concrete floor is cold, hard against his bony joints._

_He bows his head down to the floor, fists clenching on the concrete in front of him. The first tears begin to fall. And he’s trying to steady his breathing, and he can’t, and he’s taking in raspy mouthfuls of air and squeezing his eyes shut and that emptiness in him thuds, thuds, thuds._

_If he’s holding onto some hope that she will respond, it’s useless. The room is deafeningly silent. It only amplifies the sound of his broken sobs, reverberating from wall to wall. Glittering dust flutters down like snow. She doesn’t stir._

_It’s been two months since his move to Daibazaal, and two months since he’s lost his connection to the black lion._

_Keith’s breathing slows. Quiets down to small huffs._

_He licks his lips and tastes salt. Keith pushes himself up to his feet, wiping his face and roughly carding a hand through his hair._

_Without another glance at her, he turns and leaves._


	5. Chapter 5

“What the hell is _he_ doing here?” 

Through the glass of the windshield, Joqar, gray and cloudless, looked pretty bleak. The current season of stormy weather brought along unpredictable weather and near opaque fog, and due to last night's heavy rain the crew decided to meet the group in the morning instead. Runa had her path to the Blades base mapped out, but even with her built in navigation device it wouldn’t be an easy journey. 

They turned at his presence. 

“Good morning to you, too, grumpy,” Acxa said, with a careful smile that brought up their talk last night. She stood with Shiro the rest of the crew at the front of the bridge, a holographic map projected over the controls. Shiro was still in his armor from the day before, and Keith pretended not to notice that his right cheekbone had begun purpling. “We explained the situation to Shiro—” 

“More like he forced it out of us,” muttered Yailik, crossing his arms. 

“—and he offered to escort Runa to the base.” Her smile grew more forceful. “Isn’t that kind of him?” 

“My arm essentially operates as a flashlight,” Shiro said, raising his robotic hand and making it into a fist. A blinding beam of white light shot through straight at Keith, who scowled and turned his head away. “Sorry,” Shiro said, flustered, quickly lowering it. “But you get the idea.” 

“The prisoner shouldn’t be a part of our _plan_,” Keith said. “And who let him out of the—” 

Oh. 

Briefly, he wondered where the hell Shiro spent the night. He let out a noise of frustration. “I don’t trust him alone with a member of our crew.” 

“He seems pretty harmless,” Runa said, poking Shiro in the shoulder and smirking at the way he jumped back with a menacing glare. “Although easily provoked. Reminds me of those animals you have on Earth… what are they called, again?” 

“Raccoons,” Acxa said. “Or…” 

“Right, and three of the hangar sentries are still recovering in the med bay,” Keith said. _And he’s not a fucking raccoon. He’s a parasite._ “I don’t trust him,” he repeated, this time more severely, watching Shiro’s emotionless face. “He can go with Runa, but Yaikil, you’re joining them.” 

“Actually, I need to check out the damage that this—” he shot a hard look at Shiro “—_nuisance_ has caused the ship.” 

Keith’s eyes slid coldly to Acxa. 

“_I_,” she said meaningfully, “am configuring our route to the next destination. Commander duties call, Captain. _Terribly sorry_.” 

Keith had to take a deep breath. He might’ve screamed otherwise. “Hangar in five,” he grit through clenched teeth. He turned, skirt whirling, and stormed out of the bridge. 

Finally, Acxa’s lips settled into a satisfied smirk. 

—

Keith wondered how such an inhospitable planet held a population of nearly two million. 

Hot, syrupy air filled their lungs. The pull of gravity was almost three times as much as Earth’s, and with the strong atmospheric pressure every step they felt like an invisible force field was slamming them back down to the rocky ground again. 

Sweat dripped into Shiro’s eyes, his space suit’s cooling system clearly not sufficing. He led the way with his robotic hand held out and flashlight activated. Runa kept up with him whereas Keith hung back to keep as much distance between himself and Shiro as possible. 

“We should be there in a few doboshes,” Runa announced, voice muffled by her mask. “It’s just straight ahead.” 

Shiro nodded wordlessly, trudging forward. Keith could sense he regretted volunteering himself. 

When they did finally arrive at the base they were instructed to rendez-vous at, Keith understood why people called this place Mole City. From what they could see, the land was covered in dozens of round, metal hatches—the Joqari people had made their life entirely underground. 

The three of them stood around one of these cavern entrances. “This is it,” Runa said. Shiro aimed the light at the hatch, which had something in Galran etched into it. “I’ll tell them we’re here.” 

Keith scanned and copied the location. “Alright,” he said, putting on his Captain voice. “We’ll retrieve you and the other Blades in six phoebs, Commander Runa. You must be in constant communication with the _Koz’koren_ throughout this time so we can keep tabs on the group’s progress, and if there are any problems, we’ll send assistance as soon as possible. Do you understand?” 

Runa nodded firmly just as the hatch opened and a young Galran face popped out. When Runa gave the all-clear after hopping down, Keith immediately started the journey back. 

“Hey,” Shiro called, running after him, “what’s the rush?” 

Keith didn’t say anything, instead focusing on the blinking location of the ship on his wrist device. It was boiling and he _needed_ to get back to the coolness of the ship. Besides, Shiro didn’t deserve an explanation. 

Shiro caught up to him. The white light emanating from his arm cleared a couple feet of the dense fog in front of them, but they were otherwise wading through pea soup. 

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Keith was always a few feet ahead. The pressure in the air continued working against their bodies, and he could feel it with every step, every breath. 

His boots kicked up clouds of gray dust. Suddenly, Keith stopped. His ear twitched. Stumbling a bit, Shiro did, too. 

“What, what is it?” 

Keith opened his mask and closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply. Only the smell of dry earth, until something more acidic that spiked his nose. 

“It’s about to storm,” he said, sullen. The mask shielded over his face again. “We better pick up the pace.” 

Shiro looked at him funny. “Are all Galra born with internal weather radars?” 

Keith ignored him. He began walking faster as the first fat drops of rain began to fall, wetting the ground and pelletting against his hood and arms and back. At least this would cool him down a little. 

Then he realized that he’d been walking into gray nothingness. The white light guiding them was gone. 

Keith whirled. Shiro wasn’t there. 

It wasn’t that Keith was afraid of getting lost—the GPS in his wristband alone could bring him to the ship perfectly fine. But Shiro had been following him. 

He tried to think of how long it had been since he heard Shiro’s footsteps behind him, and realized he didn’t know. 

And, strangely, horror never settled in. Instead, he burned crackled in the same way he did when he pounced on Shiro in the bridge. He could go on. Go back to the ship and fly far, far away, into the great cosmic vat that space is, and leave Shiro here. Forget about him. 

“Shiro!” he heard the frustrated shout come out of his mouth before the thought could fully materialize. “Shiro! _Shiro!_” 

It was nothing like the time when he and Shiro had been propelled through a wormhole and crash-landed on an unfamiliar, geyser-ridden planet. He’d learned a lot that day. That he’d do anything to make sure Shiro was safe, and that—and that he could form a relationship with Black. Watching the purple creatures close in for another attack as Shiro clutched his wound, unable to defend himself, had made his blood go cold. He’d do anything for Shiro. 

Before, at least. 

If you asked him to pinpoint the exact moment when he stopped saving Shiro, Keith couldn’t tell you. He would think back to the days on the Atlas after Honerva, when Shiro spent every hour buried in his office and wouldn’t respond to knocks on the door, or texts, and blurt “Sorry, _so and so_ really needs me right now” when Keith bumped into him in the halls, not quite meeting his eye. He would think of Curtis’ shoulder pressed against Shiro’s in the mess hall where they sat side by side with the other senior Garrison staff. He would hear their flowering laughs, and duck his head down like he did then. He had wanted to burst out of his skin and reach out with spindly arms, splintered with bones if need be, if that’s what it took to reach Shiro. Or did he need to fold himself inward, tape himself shut in a box until Shiro unpackaged it when he was ready? Would he ever be ready? 

At some point, he couldn’t figure it out anymore. It had been clear before—cutting Shiro free out of Garrison quarantine. Begging Black to let him in so he could scare the reptilian beasts away. Searching endlessly for Shiro after his disappearance. Accepting death, free-falling through space as the clone facility collapsed behind them, because he would never let go of Shiro’s wrist, because he'd never give up on Shiro. He couldn’t tell you. It never hit him like a freight train. Maybe it was because he was being run over every single day. Later, he would wonder if that was why he was blinded for so long. When the line between throwing himself in front of a bullet for Shiro and coming to understand the futility in doing so became too blurred, he had to wonder who it was behind the trigger, and which one of them really needed saving. 

“Answer me!” Keith yelled now, his voice drowning into the foggy abyss, as he aimlessly circled around. Cold rain hammered down on him, slid down his mask and muddled his vision. “_Where are you?_” 

His foot knocked into something, and Keith tripped forward. Gravity pulled him down. His chin slammed against the rocky ground before the rest of his body did. 

“Fuck,” Keith groaned. He turned his head to the side, and came face to face with Shiro, whose body was splayed face-down on the ground. 

Keith clambered up and immediately flipped Shiro over onto his back. Shiro’s eyes were closed. “Shiro? Shiro,” he said. He shook Shiro’s body, and Shiro groaned in response. “Wake up.” 

Slowly, Shiro opened his eyes. He registered the rivulets of water travelling down his visor, the incessant patter of rain. His brow furrowed at the blurry face that took up most of his line of sight—Keith’s face. He didn’t look worried, not in the way that he had when he’d opened the prison cell. “Keith? What happened?” 

“You tell me,” Keith said. “You just collapsed.” 

Shiro swallowed, which he realized was difficult, and turned his head inside his helmet. He groaned again. Someone had thrashed his brain around before returning it, sludgy and jumbled, to his skull. 

“When was the last time you ate? Or drank?” 

“I… I don’t know,” he admitted. Was he slurring? “Maybe two days ago.” 

“Jesus Christ.” Keith pulled him up into sitting position, then grabbed his left arm and threw it over his own shoulder. He tried getting them to stand up together. Shiro tumbled down again. It was easier when he was parallel to the ground, he thought. And why did the right side of his face hurt? Just let me lie here. Forever, maybe. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? The rain… the coolth. 

“Shiro, you’ve got to _work_ with me.” Keith’s voice. Again. Shiro gripped Keith’s shoulder and tried standing again. “Okay. Okay?” Keith said. “We should go back to the caves. Wait the storm out.” 

With Keith’s left hand grasping Shiro’s wrist on his shoulder and the other gripping his waist, they hobbled back in the direction they came from. Wind began to pick up, howling around them and whipping rain into their faces. Keith could barely read the map projection from his band, with a six-foot-four man leaning on him and rain slashing down on them in a heavily clouded atmosphere. 

When the scrape of his steel toe of his boot made contact with a different surface, Keith looked down. He set Shiro down and repeatedly banged his fist against the circular metal hatch. “This is Keith Kogane, Captain of the _Koz’koren_,” he shouted, “and part of the Blade of Marmora. I have an ill—_comrade_ with me. We wish to seek shelter. Please let us in.” 

Rain continued pouring down in sheets. Keith could feel it beginning to seep through his hood as cold water trickled into his collar. With a grunt, he unsheathed his blade and rammed it into the crevice between the edge of the hatch and the ground. Keith gave it a solid push, and the hatch popped open. 

He peered inside. A ladder led a couple metres down into the dugout, which, from where he crouched, looked pretty small. 

Keith slung his sword back into his shoulder scabbard and then Shiro over his back, instructing him to hold onto him as he began to climb down the ladder. Shiro gave a mumbly reply. He closed the hatch above them, and then they were enveloped by darkness, save for the soft blue light from Shiro’s Altean shoulder. Finally free from the rain, Keith continued going down until they reached the bottom. He stepped down and lowered Shiro against a dirt wall. 

Keith straightened. “Is anyone there?” he called out, taking his blade out again and holding it out steadily at his side. Pale violet light lit his way as he explored the dark cavern, which was bigger than he thought—a small tunnel lead into a larger space, which in turn split into two separate tunnels, one going forward and the other going deeper underground. He’d leave the exploring for another day, he decided, returning to the front. 

“We should be safe,” he said, returning his blade. He knelt down in front of Shiro, who had closed his eyes again, and took something out of his belt. “Here.” 

Shiro opened his eyes lazily, trailed them down to Keith’s gloved hand. He held a flask, its lid screwed off. Shiro’s hands went up to remove his helmet. When he managed to take it off, finally rid of the humidity building inside, he took deep breaths of cool air that was pungent with the smell of rich, damp earth. A relieving change from the heat of the world above them. 

Shiro took the flask with his robotic hand and brought it to his lips. He tipped his head back, let the lukewarm water swoosh around in his mouth before swallowing it. 

Keith watched him drink for a moment, then leaned back against the opposite wall a few feet away. He put a knee up and kept the other leg extended. Suddenly, he felt as if his muscles had been run over by a stampede. He deactivated his mask and was instantly hit with the pungent smell of wet soil. Finally, Shiro lowered the flask from his mouth, panting and arching his head back. “Thank you,” he breathed. 

Keith shrugged. “Couldn’t have you dying on me, could I? It’d be too much paperwork.” He heard a laugh as Shiro looked down. 

_So that’s where he’s at_, Shiro thought. Keith would have never been able to make jokes like that when they were—well, it had been a long time since they were anything. 

Above them, the rain pounded relentlessly at the metal hatch. Aquamarine and lavender weakly interrupted the engulfing black. 

Shiro held an arm out, offering the flask back. “I didn’t drink all of it.” 

“Not thirsty,” Keith said. 

“Are you—” 

“I’m sure. You look like shit, you could use it.” 

Shiro didn’t have it in him to cackle. “Yeah, well, being locked up in a prison cell isn’t exactly the best beauty regimen out there, is it?” He downed the rest of the water. 

They listened to the rain. Though it usually helped him sleep, it was anything but soothing right now for Keith. Maybe it was because he was stuck in a hole in the ground with the last person he’d ever want to be in that predicament with. 

“I should thank you,” Shiro said, breaking the silence, “for last night.” 

“_Don’t_,” Keith hissed, sending him a glare through his mask. If he weren’t so tired he’d probably be going at Shiro again. Physically. “Don’t ever bring that up again. _Ever_.” 

“Got it, Captain.” He smiled, perhaps a little dazedly, at the ground and let out a short puff of air. “I never imagined you as a Captain.” 

“What? Didn’t think I could do it?” Keith challenged. Shiro’s eyes fluttered up. Keith wished Shiro would look anywhere except at him, but Keith rarely got what he wanted. He decided to blame Shiro’s dehydrated deliriousness for that. 

“No, it’s not that,” Shiro said, steel eyes unreadable. “I just, I didn’t think it was what you wanted,” he said. 

“You don’t know what I want.” 

“Keith—” 

“Why are you here?” Keith just said it outright. “Not _here_, but why did you infiltrate my ship? Is—is help needed on Earth? Or Altea? Are the Blades required for—” 

“What?” Shiro “Keith, I said—” 

“No, really, tell me,” Keith implored, leaning forward. He wished he’d kept his mask on. “It’s me, isn’t it? It’s me? What do you want from me?” I can’t give you anything else. 

“I just wanted to talk to you, Keith,” Shiro said, helpless as to how to calm Keith down. He’d forgotten. As much as he hated himself for the fact. “I—I just wanted to talk.” 

“Bullshit,” Keith said. “You could have just called.” 

Shiro sighed. “Would you have answered?” 

Keith opened his mouth. To Keith, Shiro sounded like a parent who had their kid all mapped out, predicting every move before they moved a finger, said a syllable. _You don’t, don’t know me_. Closed it, opened it again. “How did you even find me? We’re thousands of lightyears away from Earth’s solar system.” 

“You know a little cosmic distance has never stopped Pidge.” 

_Katie_. Their little brainiac. Keith shook his head. And then he thought about Katie thinking about him, searching for _him_, and he wished he never asked. He cleared his throat and closed his eyes, laying back down against the packed soil. Tried to focus on the drilling of rain again. 

“But it’s true,” Shiro said. “I do want to talk to you, Keith. It’s been—it’s been a long time.” 

“I think I meant for it to be that way when I left Earth,” Keith murmured. 

“God, Keith, do you have to be so bitter all the time?” Shiro’s face scrunched up, not that Keith could see. For some reason, he wanted to smile at how exasperated Shiro sounded. “It’s like—I don’t know, you’ve—you’ve gone back to square one.” 

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to smile anymore. He opened his eyes. His back and lungs and throat burned, suddenly—that’s all Shiro ever did now. Set his body aflame and leave him to put it out himself. To pick up the pieces. 

“Maybe I should have left you on this planet to die,” Keith spat. He got up at the same time that his mask flipped over his face again, and he started climbing back up the ladder. “Maybe I will. Oh, but don’t worry,” he added sarcastically, and he kept climbing up, “I’m sure the _Garrison_ will come to your rescue soon.” He might have said the name of the place with too much venom, but his memories of it weren't exactly fond. 

“Keith, don’t—” Shiro stood too, too fast. Dizziness overwhelmed him as the room spun, and he held the wall to balance himself until everything was less blurred. “I can’t go back to the Garrison.” 

“Oh yeah?” he said. He took wrung after wrung. “And why’s that? They wouldn’t let their esteemed Commander perish on some alien planet, would they? Shit, that sounds awfully familiar… oh, right—” 

“I quit.” 

Keith looked down at Shiro, his brows knit together. For a second he wondered if Shiro meant that he was quitting him, quitting Keith, and then it clicked. “_The Garrison?_” he sputtered. "Your job. At the Garrison." 

“It… became suffocating,” Shiro said. He gulped. “I needed to get out.” 

Keith let one hand go. Shiro might have told Keith that for a hundred different reasons. The idea that he could be lying flitted past Keith, but he doubted it—the pressure that came along with being a perfect soldier, of performing flawlessly at every task, was stifling, and the same gray floors and windowless rooms and orange furniture you saw everyday seemed to close in on you. Still, he thought Shiro liked what he did, because his pilot days—it seemed—were surely over, and he never failed to impress his seniors. 

He had so many questions—_When? How? Why?_ And Shiro stared back up at him, almost sadly. _This_ Shiro was so different than the one who had stormed into his ship with his robotic hand wrapped around the sentry’s neck, whose every word was like a trigger setting Keith off into absolute turbulence. 

This Shiro had a darkening bruise blooming over his cheek, crawling towards the base of his eye. This Shiro’s white hair, shining blue, was slick with sweat and pressed to his forehead. Keith noticed, for the first time, that he still had that same buzz cut. The same bit of floppy hair on top of his forehead that made his features appear more boyish than his age should have allowed. He remembered glancing sidelong at this face in the Atlas, wondering what had gone so wrong between them. 

“I’m sorry.” It was all Keith said as he collected himself. If Shiro wanted sympathy, that was the most he could provide right now. He watched Shiro open his mouth to speak. “I'm sorry, but I’m not going to be your Space Adventure Chaperone.” 

“That’s not what I—” 

“What you want,” Keith sighed, turning back to the ladder. He took another step upward. “When have I ever been what you wanted?” 

Keith waited for a response he knew he wouldn’t receive. 

In the ensuing silence, he realized that the rain had stopped. 

“You never told me you were leaving.” 

Shiro croaked the words out. 

“You didn’t deserve to know,” Keith responded, though his voice was close to a whisper. He tucked his head down a little. “There should be a shuttle coming to pick you up tonight,” he said quietly. “It’ll take you back to Earth, or… or wherever the hell you want to go. You can stay on my ship until then.” He paused, looked up at the hatch. “I really am sorry about the Garrison.” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- please take this dry chapter as a peace offering because it's going to take ages to write the next one (but it's outlined! and it takes place in the present so no more having to sit through flashbacks for a while. maybe. i will probably be eating my words very soon.) 
> 
> \- thank u @illegirlbyun for listening to me ramble nonstop abt this fic because u know i won't ever shut up about sheith. u've been a big support :-) follow her on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/dazzlegguk)

_The first annual Coalition Ball will be an event that takes place in the New Altea Castle, a silent auction disguised as a dinner and dance. On this day, space will be filled with various ships all flocking from various parts of the universe to Altea. Of course, former Captain of the Atlas Takashi Shirogane is obligated to go, as are the former paladins of Voltron._

_Shiro really, really is not looking forward to it._

_“Can you relax for once?” Matt slathers more gel onto his hands, leans closer to Shiro and runs them through his white hair. He knows Shiro is reluctant to go—he just doesn’t exactly understand why. “You’ve been drowning yourself in work. And you barely hang out with us anymore,” he pouts._

_“You can blame the new Admiral for that,” Shiro says, frowning down at his black trousers. Jager, a middle-aged woman who flew in from the Garrison Germany, was non-stop with the workload ever since Shiro retired as Captain of the Atlas. But, in truth, he doesn’t mind it. It gives him something to do—something else to focus on other than the spinning clusterfuck that is his mind._

_“It will be nice to see everyone, though,” Shiro pipes up, smiling at Matt’s reflection as sincerely as he can. That isn’t a lie, he would love to be able to catch up with Lance and Allura, Hunk, Pidge, and—Keith. But he doesn’t know if he has the energy for it. He can’t remember the last time he’s slept, actually slept, and the idea of masking everything with the pretense of smiles and small talk sounds exhausting. “It’s been a while since we’ve all been together.”_

_“Understatement of the century,” Matt mutters. He takes a swig of mouthwash and gurgles it around in his mouth before spitting it out. Turning to Shiro, he smooths the lapel of his suit over with flattened palms. “Do I look okay?”_

_“Great,” Shiro grins genuinely this time. “Don’t worry. I don’t think N-7 will be able to tell the difference.”_

_Matt shoots him a glare, then fishes his phone out of the inside of his jacket. “Half an hour till Pidge and Hunk leave. We should probably head down.”_

_Shiro takes a breath and looks back at his reflection, wearing a well-fitted white dress shirt and black jacket on top. He doesn’t want to stare at himself for too long. He adjusts the bow tie around his neck, clearing his throat. It’s too tight. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”_

_Matt and Shiro leave Shiro’s room and pick up N-7 from her quarters. Shiro watches as Matt pecks her cheek before greeting her himself. The three of them go down to the hangar, where dozens of shuttles are lined up in single file. A group of Garrison staff board the first one until it’s full, and then it’s sent speeding out of the hangar into the night as the next shuttle rolls up._

_But that won’t be their mode of transportation tonight. Matt and N-7 will ride with Pidge in the green lion, along with the Holt parents. Hunk told Shiro that he could join him in Yellow since his family said flying in a lion made them too nauseous—Shiro figured motion sickness was common amongst the Garrets._

_After watching Green take off, Shiro meets up with Hunk where Yellow is parked. He’s dressed in a navy suit and matching pants, which Shiro compliments him about before teasing him for blushing._

_“Where’s Curtis?” Hunk asks._

_Shiro jumps. He doesn’t mean to, because it's an innocent enough question, but his ears still heat up. It’s not that he wants to tuck their relationship away, and that definitely is not what Curtis would want, but he doesn’t want it to be spread out like a magazine for everyone to flick through, either. And although he wishes he were hyper-aware of the glances people shot and giggles from young cadets passing by, Shiro would always be too fixated on Curtis’ body leaning in closer as they talked on the bridge, the hand pressed to his thigh in the mess hall. He just could not make sense of that loss of focus that came whenever Curtis was too close. Was this what infatuation felt like? Every time, his eyes would be glued to the hand on his leg, but it only registered after a second that the hand was attached to someone—to Curtis._

_“He’s, uh,” Shiro stutters, hoping he didn’t take too long to come up with a response, “staying behind. Extra personnel were required to move the remaining passengers out of the Atlas and he volunteered himself. I couldn’t convince him to come along.”_

_Hunk shakes his head with a smile. “Like attracts like. You bunch of workaholics.”_

_Together, they board his lion. Hunk takes his seat in the cockpit while Shiro hangs back a bit, feeling too fidgety to sit down on the passenger benches._

_He keeps thinking about how nowhere in the hangar did he see Black._

_“Been a while, girl, huh?” Hunk takes control of the lever on the controls. Light courses through the shadowy cockpit and illuminates the room in gold. Yellow up to her feet and shakes her head, jostling both of her passengers as Hunk laughs. “Yeah, I know.”_

_He looks back to Shiro. “You’ve gotta excuse me if my flying’s a bit rusty. Haven’t really exercised Yellow much these days.”_

_Shiro glances up, belatedly realizing he’s been staring at the ground. “Huh? Oh, yeah, no problem. Can’t be that bad. I haven’t flown the Atlas since…” he regrets bringing it up. Because now he has to say her name, and even if he doesn’t, they’re both thinking it. He hates how bad at this he is._

_“Yeah,” Hunk says quietly. He turns back and then Yellow revs forward, running out of the hangar and over the runway for a couple hundred metres until she's built up enough momentum to lift off the ground. They are out of Earth’s atmosphere in no time, flying through the solar system and past dozens of Garrison issue shuttles. Up ahead, Hunk sees Green’s small figure prancing easily through the asteroid belt. For now, they’re good on autopilot, cruising just under the speed of light._

_“I’m sorry I brought her up,” Shiro says, sighing. “Today’s meant to be the opposite of war.”_

_Hunk shakes his head. “Stop. Don’t apologize for what you can’t control,” he says, turning in his seat and resting his chin on his arms, folded over the top of his chair. “We all think of her, of everything, at the worst times, don’t we? It sucks.”_

_Shiro nods down at his shoes, shiny and black. He forgets, a lot of the time, that he isn’t alone._

_“Are you going to sit?” Hunk asks._

_“I can’t sit still,” Shiro admits sheepishly._

_“Ah,” Hunk nods. He doesn’t push, and, grateful, Shiro doesn’t elaborate._

_They arrive on planet Altea in less than half an hour, landing in front of the New Altea Castle. Red, Blue, and Green already sit in a crescent shape at the forefront of the grand staircase, facing the castle. Yellow joins them as Hunk sets her down in a sitting position beside Pidge’s lion. Altogether, they make an incomplete semi-circle—there is a gaping space between each pair of lions, meant for the one paladin that Shiro has not stopped thinking about since the evening first began._

_But no one has said anything, so he assumes nothing._

_They exit the lion and climb up the castle steps. The towering double doors have been thrown wide open, and bright white spills out of the castle foyer, which has been transformed into a ballroom. It’s mostly empty right now, save for a few castle staff running around rearranging and assembling tables, since shuttles are snails compared to the lions._

_“Shiro! Hunk!” Shiro looks up and spots Allura at the top of the grand staircase, waving to them. She’s with Lance. As gorgeous as Allura is in her draping blue Altean gown, it’s rather ordinary for her to wear traditional Altean clothing, whereas Shiro hasn’t yet gotten used to seeing Lance dressed head to toe in an Altean blue and ivory suit, with a blue matching cape and gold-toed knee-high white boots._

_Shiro smiles. Hunk waves back, shouting a cheery “Hey, guys!”_

_Allura and Lance make their way down the left staircase, meeting Hunk and Shiro at the base._

_“Queen Allura,” Shiro says, bowing. “Prince Lance.”_

_Allura immediately looks horrified. “Oh, shush,” she reprimands him. “Quit the formalities. I’m Allura and he’s Lance and that’s _that_.”_

_“Dude, the cape looks sick,” Hunk says._

_“Thanks. It’s one of King Alfor’s, actually.” He beams at Allura, who smiles fondly._

_“I insisted he wear it.” Allura’s smile softens. “I only wish my father were here to see what we’ve been doing. He loved planet Altea almost as much as life itself.”_

_“He would be proud of you,” Shiro tells her, but he feels like he’s following a script. Later, when conversation shifts to a less sensitive subject, he asks where Pidge is, and Lance points to one of the many balconies leading out from the ballroom. He excuses himself and leaves._

_The balcony extends out of the room through an arch-framed door, overlooking sprawling fields of juniberries. Inky, clear skies roll overhead, carrying handfuls of stars and small cruisers that are just now pulling up to Altea’s atmosphere. They come down like a meteor shower, all burning orange orbs against a midnight blue backdrop._

_Pidge and her family stand at the edge of the balcony and observe the stars. The Holt parents are on either side of their kids with arms wrapped around them. Shiro recognizes that this is a moment meant only for them, and he watches quietly from where he stands at the door, hands tucked in his pockets. Seeing the Holts like this, just enjoying each other’s presence, reminds him of his own family. Though he mourned that loss long ago, he can still find that distant aching somewhere in his chest._

_“You can’t just stand there and expect us not to ask you to join.”_

_His attention is brought to Sam’s warm face, eyes crinkled in a welcoming smile. “Get over here, Shiro.”_

_“Sorry, I—” he shakes his head and takes a step back as Pidge, Matt, and Colleen turn. “I didn’t mean to impose—you were having a family moment. I just—wanted to talk to Pidge.”_

_“If you think for one second you’re not family,” Colleen says sternly, “you’re denser than Coran is when he’s drunk on nunvill.”_

_Shiro laughs and lets Sam and Colleen come up to embrace him. Colleen pats his shoulder. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she says into his ear._

_“I’m gonna find N-7,” Matt says. “Catch up with us later, okay?” he tells Pidge and Shiro, before leaving the terrace and returning inside._

_“Someone’s looking sharp tonight,” Pidge comments. She pushes her glasses further up her nose. “Is that hair gel?”_

_“Matt’s to blame if it looks terrible,” Shiro mumbles, not used to his hair being so stiff. “The suit looks good on you,” he adds. “Let me guess—Colleen forced you into it?”_

_“You know I’d show up in a lab coat if I could.” Pidge rolls her eyes._

_Shiro joins her at the stone parapets. He looks out. Cool breeze weaves through the air and the juniberries, covering the green fields in a blanket of magenta, sway gently with the wind. He shivers._

_“I never see you around the Garrison these days,” Pidge says, propping her hands up on the parapets and resting her face in her hands. “I’m always in the lab and you’re always… working.”_

_He presses his lips together. “It’s not ideal.” He turns and smiles tiredly at her. “Your experiments going well?”_

_“Chip 9.0 is up and running,” Pidge says. She clasps her hands together. “He’s not that great at administering meds yet, but we’re working on it.”_

_“Ah,” Shiro nods. Chatter begins to flow out of the room behind them, signifying the first arrivals of guests. “Hey, uh.” He clears his throat. “Out front. It was, um, seeing the lions together again, was, uh, well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen them together.”_

_“Yeah?” Pidge says, turning towards him. “We’re doing an air show with the MFEs later in the evening. Nothing special, just a few barrel rolls and tail sides. Of course, we’d get in formation, but it’s not like we can form Voltron right now.” Her mouth is tugged into a flat line._

_“Oh,” Shiro says. He scratches the back of his back. “Yeah, Keith is usually more punctual than this.”_

_Pidge stares at him._

_“What?” Shiro says._

_“Keith is usually more punctual,” she repeats carefully._

_“Yeah. Is something up?”_

Shit_. It's all she thinks. _Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

_“Nothing,” Pidge replies cooly. Momentarily, she turns back to the rolling meadows of flowers, brow furrowed in apparent deep thought. Then she straightens. “Ready to head back?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_The room has slowly filled up with Garrison members and leaders from every corner of the universe, and it's a strange sight seeing everyone in formal attire instead of armor and battledress. After another hour rolls around, the mingling guests are invited to take their seats by Coran, who stands at the top of the staircase with, of course, a microphone. Shiro sits at a round table with the paladins, Romelle, Matt, and Sam and Colleen. All eyes are on Coran as he starts his speech—he starts by thanking everyone for coming to the Coalition Ball, and then dives into the Coalition’s vision, the people at its core, what’s been accomplished in the past year—Jesus, Keith is really late._

_Dinner commences shortly after Coran joins them at the table. He tries to listen to Hunk’s breakdown of each dish. His eyes keep wandering back to the entrance, though, wondering what the hell is keeping him so busy. As his eyes sweep the room, they land on Krolia, and Shiro almost breathes a sigh of relief before realizing the only others with her are Kolivan and unrecognizable Blades._

_It’s only when he has to turn back to listen to Allura relay the story of Lance trying to speak to Alteans in their native language does he notice the nine other faces around the table. Nine different faces, nine seats. Nine occupied seats._

_Everyone is breaking into peals of laughter._

_Allura is clutching Lance’s arm, trying to catch her breath._

_His collar threatens to suffocate him._

_Later, when the tables are wheeled away to clear the dance floor, Shiro finds himself gravitating towards the open bar. An eight-limbed, yellow-scaled alien bartends, and pours him a whiskey without asking. He takes it. And another, and another, and soon he’s lost count of how many glasses he’s downed._

_He tries to blink it away, leaning against the counter, whatever the feeling is that lodges a ball in his throat. He needs to rein it in. People can’t see Takashi Shirogane getting stupidly drunk in the corner. But the lights are too bright and the live band plays at a tempo too fast, and he really hopes the bitter taste comes from the drink he’s nursing._

_Then he sees Pidge. People dance and sway past her. He watches her grab someone’s arm—Allura’s. She’s pulling her down, mouth moving close to her ear. Two broad-shouldered Balmeran twirl by them, and the next thing he sees is Allura, across the dance floor, face stricken with anguish, mouth agape, and staring straight at him._

_He can’t do this anymore._

_He sets his unfinished drink down on the counter and drunkenly stumbles his way through dance partners stepping back and forth to the music, doesn’t stop until he feels cool air prickle his face. The skies have blackened over now, but Altean night are never dark, lit by a thousand stars and bands of icy nebulae. Shiro bounds down the steps, reveling in the wind in his face, but when he’s reached the bottom he realizes he has nowhere to go. The four lions loom overhead. He is left to stare at the empty space between each pair._

_“Please go back inside.”_

_Shiro turns to face Allura, who stands yards away at the base of the steps, gown billowing. Her brows are upturned in concern. “Shiro.”_

_“When?” he chokes, not bothering to hide how his voice breaks. “When did he go?”_

_Allura worries her bottom lip between her teeth. She exhales._

_“Nearly a deca-phoeb ago.”_

_Shiro starts laughing._

_It builds up in his chest and in the end he has to cough it out, a dry and hollow noise that suits the taste of smoke and tobacco in his mouth._

_“Shiro, please—”_

_He throws his head back as he roars in another fit of laughter. “Oh, God,” he says, shaking his head and finally somewhat recovered. He swipes a finger at his eye. “Oh, God, Allura. A deca-phoeb ago? I haven’t seen him in a deca-phoeb, and I just assumed he was busy with Garrison work or on missions, that we just hadn’t crossed paths in a while, or, or—”_

_She doesn’t say anything, hands folded perfectly in front of her._

_“Was anyone going to tell me? Was anyone going to goddamn—”_

_“We assumed he had,” she says, too softly. Then she begins to walk closer, closing the distance between them until Shiro’s looking right into her endlessly azure eyes. He feels warm hands brush against throat. Allura’s slender fingers work at the knot of his bow tie, and then she slips it off his collar and hands it to him. “Better?”_

_His head drops and he closes his eyes as he clenches the tie in his fist. He can’t think straight—behind eyelids he sees too many shapes, and that buzzing of alcohol won’t settle._

_Part of him wishes that Allura would have left him by now, because she’s the damn Queen of Altea and he’s here suffocating by his own hand, but when he opens his eyes she’s still standing there, quietly watching him._

_He reaches into his trouser pocket and fishes something out._

_Allura eyes fall to the sleek silver band held between his thumb and forefinger. A single diamond, shaped like an oblong hexagon, is set in its centre. It captures the moonlight from a thousand different angles so that its glint is near blinding. She doesn’t gasp or cheer._

_“He proposed yesterday,” Shiro says, quiet, turning the ring over and over in his hand. “Got down on one knee and told me that I’m his universe, that he can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together.”_

_“You said yes,” she observes._

_“I love him,” Shiro says, and it’s the truth. He knows he loves Curtis. But. “But—” his brows knit. “I can’t put it on.”_

_Allura offers a hand, grasps his wrist. She speaks gently. “Should I say congratulations?”_

_“Better save that for the official announcement,” he mumbles. “Should I be wearing this?”_

_“Better avoid bad press.”_

_“Maybe after the party.”_

_“After,” she agrees. “When you get back.”_

_“Right.”_

_“There you are!” Coran’s voice. Allura looks over her shoulder. He waves his arms over his head in a frantic gesture. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Your Majesty. Show starts in ten doboshes!”_

_“I’ve got to get changed,” she tells Shiro. She pauses, gives his hand a tight squeeze. “Do you want this, Shiro?”_

_It takes him by surprise whenever his thoughts are served on a platter in front of him, garnished with the sound of hearing them through someone else’s voice. “I love him,” he repeats. She offers a wan smile back and turns to leave, letting go of his hand._

_Along with her trusted Advisor, a Queen returns to her castle and leaves her white lion in her wake, standing in the night wind._

_He turns back to the stars. He always does. But now that he’s lived in them, fought in them, watched them implode before his eyes, they don’t grace his dreams in the same way they did when he was a child._

_He pictures Keith flying through them, space wolf at his side. He lets his mind wander further. He sees Keith meeting someone, an agile Blade just as lithe as he is—he doesn’t know Keith’s type. He sees a home where the children grow up learning how to hold a sword properly and speak Galran, their braids flying behind them as they tackle each other and their parents down to the floor._

_And he thinks, like that, a weight is lifted off his shoulders._

_Keith deserves to be happy without him. Shiro _needs_ Keith to be happy without him. It’s selfish, he’s selfish, but he feels it’s the only way he can cope with the ring he’s crushing in his hand. It will never work, though, because flesh never beats metal and he’s afraid of what his Altean hand will do if he moves it away from his side. So it will stay as it is and he’ll slip it on when he arrives on Earth, right before he enters his and Curtis’ shared quarters, and he’ll slide into his side of the bed and pray that sleep takes him soon._

_Flying became second nature for Keith years ago, but Shiro has shackled him at the ankles and yanks him back down to the earth, to him, every time his fingertips reach the edges of the galaxy—never quite breaking through._

_He thinks, now, that Keith may be finally able to soar._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- i planned for this chapter to be longer but it didn't flow well and i still have to work the exact plot out. might be messy because i love not proofreading 
> 
> \- edit: minor blood warning 

As soon as they returned to the ship, Shiro was sent to the med bay to get litres of fluid pumped back into his body. Keith went straight back to the bridge, where Acxa immediately jumped into a lecture on breaking Blade protocol—“You couldn’t care to radio us at all?” When she turned to face him, her eyes widened. “What hit you? You look awful. And… wet.” 

“I got sidetracked,” Keith bit back. He unmasked and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, tugging his loosening braid out from under his uniform. “I should have sent a message.” 

“We should review our next mission,” Yaikil intercepted, crossing his arms over his chest and serpentine tail swishing back and forth impatiently. 

“Right,” Keith nodded. In the next movement, they’d be aiding in the transfer of industrial goods from planet to planet within the neighbouring Ziegem Belt, the _Koz’koren_’s next stop. “We’re already behind schedule, so we should leave as soon as Shiro is able to.” 

He felt Acxa’s eyes on him, and ignored them, tracking mud and water as he approached the map projected over the viewport. “We should be in the Ziegem Belt in the next quintant,” Acxa said, gaze steady. “The ship will have to make at least six trips to and from the planets Xhareynn and Ilsri to transport all of the supplies.” 

“We’ll need to stop at the Blades base in the belt to refuel and discuss where we’re headed next,” said Yaikil. “Kolivan will meet us there.” 

Keith nodded again. “Sounds like a plan. Is the shuttle prepared?” 

“Ready to go,” Acxa replied, “if Shiro is.” 

In a flash, the map on the screen zapped out and was replaced by a familiar Galran face. Keith’s head snapped up. 

“Keith.” Krolia’s tone was husky and her brows nearly met in the middle. It took her longer than usual to realize there were others in the room. “Commander Acxa. Lieutenant Commander Yaikil.” 

“Mom,” Keith greeted in return, not bothering to hide his confusion as he straightened. “Is everything okay? Kosmo isn’t misbehaving, is he?” Keith had left his companion with Krolia before leaving on the current expedition—Kosmo had grown rather fond of Daibazaal, where Krolia managed the local Blades base, and it wouldn’t be fair to subject the space wolf to the constant travelling if Keith didn’t have enough time to pay attention to him. 

The short hesitation of her breath was imperceptible to all but Keith. It chilled him down to his bones. 

“Is Kosmo okay?” he gurgled the words out. “Mom, answer me.” 

“I’ll wait outside,” Yaikil whispered behind him, exiting the bridge. 

“Should I go, too?” Acxa whispered. Keith didn’t respond; she chose not to move. 

Finally, Krolia’s face softened, and Keith realized that her eyes might have been red rimmed. “There was a fire,” she said. Keith’s heart immediately lurched forward. “He went in to try to save the last of the residents stuck inside. He was severely burned and he couldn’t teleport himself out.” 

All he could see were the flames licking away at his father’s body, creeping through his bunker gear, consuming him whole and bringing him to the ground as he hacked from the smoke in his lungs. He made himself speak. He blinked the hot blurriness away. “Is he dead?” 

“No,” Krolia said, and Keith heard himself exhale, “he’s alive. Barely,” she said. She was never one to waver away from the blatant truth. “The others said that I should wait until after your mission to tell you, but… but I knew you’d want to know right away. We don’t know if he’ll make it.” 

“I—” Keith swallowed thickly. “I can’t—” 

“I know, Keith. But right now, you have to decide what you want to do.” 

“I don’t know what’s right,” Keith said, stepping forward to the screen as if it would bring him closer to his mother. “I don’t…” 

“There’s no right answer here,” Krolia said. “I’m behind you, whatever you choose.” 

He took a deep breath, released it slowly. “I’m going back to Daibazaal.” 

Krolia nodded promptly. “I’ll send you the coordinates of where to meet us.” She paused. “Please hurry.” 

As soon as her face disappeared, the map blinked back to life. The symbols and pinpointed locations sprinkled over it became foreign to Keith. 

“Take the ship.” Acxa brought him back. He turned to look at her and realized that she had been listening the entire time, regaining her composure now. “We’ll set course for Daibazaal right away; we’ll be there in less than seven vargas.” 

“Absolutely not,” he said without a beat, shaking his head even if it took every iota of energy in him to do so. Even if Kosmo was drawing his last breaths, Keith understood the mission still needed to be prioritized. “It’s a waste of resources.” 

“Then you must take Shiro’s shuttle,” she argued. “We’ll keep him aboard the ship during the mission and fly him to Earth afterwards.” 

Keith shook his head again. “We don’t have that much time to waste. I’ll…” he closed his eyes. Opened them. Acxa was always stunned by how intense they could become. “I’ll take the shuttle with Shiro. Download the coordinates into the shuttle’s system. You and Yaikil continue follow the mission plan.” 

“_Captain_,” Acxa pressed, “you don’t have to—” 

“Entire civilizations are depending on us. I can’t put everything on hold for…” Keith trailed to a stop. He unfurled fists he didn’t know were clenched, stared at his palms. “Brief Yaikil on the new plan.” 

He turned toward the door, but a hand caught his wrist in its iron grip. “Keith,” Acxa said, his name rumbling from somewhere deep in her chest. “Please. You’re not thinking straight.” 

_Isn’t this what you wanted?_ He wanted to laugh. _The kiss and make up you’ve been pushing for all this time_. Keith managed to turn his wrist in her grasp and wrapped fingers around hers in turn. He twisted to meet her gaze. 

Steely gold clashed with violet and she let go. 

Keith didn’t really know what to expect when we walked into the med wing. It was a small space the color of illness, with only three beds and no living staff—a single android whirred around on wheeled feet, organizing medical instruments into a storage compartment set in the wall with its tentacle like arms. 

Armored flight suit discarded, the top half of Shiro’s bodysuit was peeled down to his hips, revealing ripples of skin and muscle that looked too starkly washed out under the harsh white lighting. He looked at peace here, with his eyes closed and body stretched out, arms limp at his sides. Except a tube disappeared down his left hand, and a bruise swept over his cheek like dark paint, and his hair was awry and matted. 

_Hello Captain Kogane. I assume you are here to see the patient._

At the sound of the Chip’s buzzing, Shiro stirred. 

Shadows and light faded in and out and fought for his attention before he saw that Keith standing over him, still in his dirt-streaked armor. Somewhere along the way his braid had become undone and long black locks, wisping out at the hips, framed his face haphazardly. Hood down, he was staring at Shiro, or somewhere near his forehead—but Keith’s too-still expression told Shiro Keith wasn’t actually _seeing_. 

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asked, immediately shooting upward and ignoring the tugging of something at his hand. Keith should have said _something_ by now. 

Closer, now, Shiro saw that Keith’s eyes glistened. As far as Shiro was aware, Keith didn’t cry, didn’t come close. He became a recluse or retaliated—either way, he plowed through his emotions and quelled them until onlookers were convinced they no longer existed, and maybe he’d even fool himself along the way. It sucked the air out of Shiro lungs to see him allowing himself bleed out like this, because it meant something was very, very wrong. 

“Kosmo was burned,” he echoed Krolia’s words to the best of his ability. Concern lanced over Shiro’s expression. “Krolia said…” What was it? _A fire. Why is it always a fire?_ “He might not make it.” 

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” it all came out in a jumbled bunch, “Keith—” 

“You owe me one.” Keith rolled over his words with his own, and Shiro let him, snapping his mouth shut. “For being a dick,” he said. “The others have to continue the relief effort…” he took an agonizing breath. “I need you to fly us to Daibazaal.” 

Shiro was already up on his feet, tearing the IV from his hand. 

Finally, Keith’s gaze met his. “Now?” Keith asked, stumbling back a bit. Not quite asking for permission, not quite questioning Shiro’s actions, either. “You’re—” his eyes dropped to the blood dripping out from the back of Shiro’s flesh hand. “—recovering.” 

In one swift movement, Shiro brought his hand to his mouth and sucked on the skin before dropping it, gaze steadfast. He zipped up his bodysuit to the nape of his neck. 

Chip looked up from his workstation. _The patient is not to leave the bed._

“Daibazaal,” said Shiro. 

—

He hadn’t fought Shiro for the controls. In any other case he’d never step foot into any moving vehicle, not with Shiro at the wheel, but Keith might have totaled the shuttle completely if he were at the helm. Shiro took the controls as soon as he donned his armor again and they boarded the shuttle. They were in the air within seconds. Distantly, Keith thought about how long it had been since he’d ever been in any spacecraft that Shiro was manning, and he let himself wonder about the fate of the Atlas. Every slight veering away from the thought of Kosmo, though, brought guilt burning in his throat. 

Shiro remained as quiet as Keith was, dividing his focus between the viewport and the screen showing their coordinates and Daibazaal’s. 

Curled in on himself on the rear passenger benches, Keith tried focusing on the sound of his breathing. He traced the criss-crosses of the diamond plate flooring with his eyes, scrutinized every scratch made on the metal until he memorized their forms. _A rebel fighter_, an overdue thought. 

A movement. He raised his head from where it was tucked between his knees. Shiro had gunned the engine to its max since they left vargas ago, putting all his weight into the joysticks gripped in his hands. 

The idea of opening his mouth and talking made Keith’s chest heavy. He started thinking about how it would feel if a comet collided into their ship. How much it would hurt, or if it wouldn’t at all. Maybe it wouldn’t. No, it wouldn’t. 

But then, of course, there’d be a funeral, side by side caskets, and Krolia would be there, and Kolivan, and Acxa, and the rest of the Blades, and the paladins, the entire fucking Garrison. 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

Shiro didn’t even hear him. Keith sighed heavily and repeated himself. 

“What?” He turned now, not letting go. “Did you say something?” 

“We’re fine on autopilot.” 

“We’ll get there faster this way,” Shiro said. 

“I _know_.” Godfuckingdamnit. “But it won’t _change_ anything. Won’t heal him.” 

Shiro quickly slowed the shuttle down and activated its autopilot function. Stars stopped dashing by them, and the distant star systems were visibly distinguishable now. He craned his neck toward Keith. “He’s going to be okay.” 

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” Keith rasped. 

“Okay,” Shiro replied. Gentle. “Earth, then?” Keith heard. He dropped his gaze and buried his chin in his arms. Drew his legs in closer to his chest. Shiro turned back to the viewport and took a breath. “They’re rebuilt most of the Garrison Galaxies in North America and Asia. Arizona’s up and running, too. It’s not the same whenever we go out into the city, though. I mean obviously it wouldn’t be the same, but, I don’t know, it’s strange, seeing the old burger joint being blown to the ground and replaced with an infirmary. 

“Hunk started teaching in the engineering department three years back. I think he feels pretty at home there. He’s great with the cadets. 

“Pidge practically lives in her laboratory now. She actually…” He chewed on his tongue. “She didn’t want to help me at first.” 

Keith swallowed, watched the top of Shiro’s head duck. “Help you find the ship?” 

“Yeah.” Shiro paused. “She acknowledged that it was selfish of her.” 

“Not completely.” Again, Shiro looked back at him and twisted his body fully. And Keith appeared so small, huddled against the wall with half of his face covered, arms wrapped tight around his legs. “Pidge—sends messages.” He shrunk further down behind raven locks. “Or, rather, sent them.” 

“Oh,” said Shiro. “I didn’t know.” 

“She sent them to the ship,” Keith whispered. He readjusted the grip of his hands. “They’re there, hundreds of them, somewhere in the database. I just…” He stretched out his legs and let his feet touch the floor, braced his palms against the edge of the bench. “Never listened to them. Never sent one back.” 

Shiro watched him. 

“When I left…” Keith hung his head as hair fell in a veil of black. He closed his eyes. “I felt like I hurt her the most. She was like a younger sister I abandoned. And I know, I know she hates being called the baby.” He laughed, airy and anguished. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe I’m just out of it.” 

He met Shiro’s gaze, now. Saw Shiro’s Adam’s apple bob, lips part weakly. 

When he’d crash landed into Keith’s ship and felt Keith plow into him like a bulldozer, he believed that Keith had become someone unrecognizable. Yes, Keith had changed, they all had. Except with hearing that come out of his mouth, Shiro felt beginnings of recognition of himself in Keith. It sent pinpricks up his neck, and he couldn’t help but ask himself what kind of a monster he created. Had he poured himself into this man just to become a walking, talking, hollow log? Because it felt like an endless cycle of falling and, as fucked up as it sounded, passing the torch on. 

“Would you,” he tried, “like me to say something to her? For you. From you. When I get back.” 

“No.” Keith shook his head, face falling flat. “No.” 

Shiro wanted to push. Wanted to pry. But he didn’t know how to fight himself, and so he nodded—hard to recall when the easy way out became so addictive. 

“It’s okay to be afraid.” He’d understood why Keith wasn’t keen on arriving as soon as possible. “It’s okay if you’re afraid to see him.” 

Keith gulped air, and Shiro severed the matter at that. 

“Why don’t you try getting some sleep?” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go. It’ll be daytime in Daibazaal when we arrive.” 

“I don’t—” 

“I’ll wake you,” Shiro said. “As soon as we land.” 

Keith hesitated, because Shiro could never keep a promise. But the exhaustion set deep in his bones weighed tonnes, and he trusted that Shiro knew going off course might be a death sentence. He whispered a small “Okay.” Shiro turned back to the viewport and listened to rustling as Keith lay himself over the bench, pressing his back to the wall and pulling his knees in. 

He fell asleep surprisingly fast. And he would dream of a house ablaze, impossibly tall golden flames that kept rising to the slate skies raining ash and falling down to kiss blackened wood boards, as if they were groveling to him for forgiveness. 


	8. Chapter 8

Oh, the devil’s inside  
You opened the door  
You gave him a ride  
Too young to know, too old to admit  
That you couldn’t see how it ends  


What did you do to my eyes?  
What did you sing to that lonely child?  
Promised it all but you lied  
You better slow down, baby, soon  
It’s all or nothing to you.  
\- my eyes, the lumineers  


_The next time he flies to planet Altea, it is because the Queen urgently requested his presence. Castle guards swarm the Garrison shuttle and only lower their weapons once they see familiar silver hair and a scar they can only surmise came from a nasty battle. They instruct him to wait outside when he requests to see Allura, but he is called in only a moment later._

_An Altean leads him through long, blue-lit corridors with towering ceilings, until she stops at a set of doors. He expects them to open automatically, but she pushes one open, revealing a room nearly doubly long as it is wide. “Her Majesty wishes to meet you here.”_

_“Is Allura—”_

_“In a moment, Her Majesty will be here. Please step inside.”_

_He nods and obeys. The guard closes the door behind him._

_Shiro finds himself entranced by the overhead vaults. The architecture looks more aged, unlike the sharp white edges and soft blue glow that made the rest of the castle. There are paintings adorning the walls—portraits of the paladins of old, Shiro realizes, as he walks along the room opposite a row of narrow floor-to-ceiling windows. He studies each one carefully, says their names in his head without needing to read the tiny gold plaques under each painting. Gyrgan, paladin of the yellow lion. Blaytz, paladin of the blue lion. Trigel, paladin of the green lion. Alfor, paladin of the red lion. And, at the end of the room, there is a portrait of Zarkon, young and smiling just like the rest of them. Paladin of the black lion. It makes him forget why he is here and remember all at once._

_“Shiro.”_

_He turns. “Allura. Hi—” Shiro’s brows go for his hairline. “Whoa. Your—sorry, it’s strange, ah, I’m just used to always seeing you in a dress.”_

_“Is it?” She allows herself to laugh, but the sound, bouncing throughout the room, is stonier than Shiro is ready for. She fixes the collar of her suit. “Lance and I just got back from a foreign affairs conference. Gowns aren’t very well suited for space travel, although somehow I did manage for quite some time before becoming a paladin.”_

_“Ah.” Shiro clears his throat. “Your message said there was an extremely important matter.”_

_Briskly, Allura crosses the room to the wall adjacent to the paintings and windows, where two staffs hang by hooks. She reaches for the one on top, holds it out in one hand. “My father used to train with me using these,” she says. “We’d spend gruelling hours in the training deck, just going at each other. He’d never go easy on me, my father. I think he knew that that would never make me a better warrior.”_

_“Allura,” Shiro says, slow._

_“When I was growing up, a lot of people saw me as nothing more than a prim princess. He made sure I knew it wasn’t what defined me.” Before he can speak, she points the staff at his left hand. “You put it on.”_

_Shiro blinks. “You told me to. What—”_

_“Is that why you did it?” She asks. Her face is painted with the cool, rosy light of dawn. “Because I told you to?”_

_“No,” Shiro says. “Allura, what is this about? I have duties on Earth. I skipped a board meeting.”_

_“I wore pink armor, once,” she says, so earnest that Shiro is almost afraid. There is a pause that drags on a second too long. “But the man I honored then is not the man I see now.”_

_She throws the staff into the air, and without thinking Shiro’s Altean arm catches it, fingers curled around the slender pearlescent object. It is marked up and down with Altean carvings he doesn’t understand._

_But looking down was a mistake. Because once he raises his head, Allura is already coming at him, staff wielded._

_“Allura, what the hell—”_

_Instinct saves him as he raises the staff to his face, barely parrying her hit. She goes for his knees and metal collides with metal again._

_“What are you doing?” Shiro shouts. “_Allura, stop!_”_

_“Fight me, Shiro,” she yells back._

_They both go for the high hit, staffs meeting above their heads._

_“I don’t want to—”_

_“I’m not giving you much of a choice.”_

_With a growl he forces her staff to the ground._

_“That’s right,” she breathes out. “Fight me. Fight it all.”_

_It rings in his skull. A mantra that is suddenly all too easy to fall into._

_Shiro swings his staff for her neck but, two steps ahead, she sends her weapon skidding across the room and dives away from the blow, rolling through fat strips of pouring sunrise before landing in the shadows._

_Allura watches him from across the room, huffing under flyaway curls of white that shroud her vision._

_“What if I run?” Shiro asks, not taking his eyes off her. Allura’s breath steadies and she keeps her gaze calculated. “What if I turn and run out?”_

_“I won’t stop you,” she says. “But I would have thought you were tired of running by now.”_

_His shoulders sag with every exhale, but this time, they fall with an immeasurable heaviness he can’t shake off._

_Allura places a careful hand on the staff at her side._

_Shiro surges forward, spinning his staff around one wrist before taking it in both hands and smacking it to the ground, left leg extended low in reverse bow stance. His mouth doesn’t move, pulled thin, but his body says enough—I am. Allura springs up and charges at him again._

_Soon, they’ve knocked the staffs out of each other’s hands, abandoning them as they start hand to hand combat. It’s pretty much muscle memory for Shiro by now. Though it does take a while for his sedentary body to loosen, arms are quickly swinging with ease through sequences he mastered as a cadet. Allura is equally as nimble, and in this room meant to memorialize heroes of the universe they are like dancers performing on stage, jumping in and out of the pink morning glow and hands slashing through air with every missed strike. Playing their parts, whatever that may be._

_Shiro doesn’t see it when Allura ducks under a jab and lands a roundhouse kick to the throat. He feels the warm, sweaty sting of flesh on flesh first before the searing pain shoots through his neck. Shiro falls backwards, body meeting the cold ground with such a startling impact he sees nothing but flashes of blinding light._

_Then a face. A familiar one. Defiance written all over her. Under it, something friendlier._

_She sticks out a hand._

_He gives her his flesh one, lets her palm slide against the metal band around his ring finger as she pulls him up._

_Shiro allows himself to be pulled into a seated position, not rising to his feet, and Allura joins him on the ground, running a hand through her tousled hair that has fallen out of its neat top knot._

_“Feel better?” Allura says, panting._

_Shiro shoots her a glare through his grimace. “After you went for the jugular? Not exactly.”_

_“Father used to drag me to spar whenever I felt—some way. It helped, having a release for all this energy in me. Gave me a good excuse to explode.”_

_I don’t want to explode, he thinks. _Because I’m always on the brink of, the brink of, the brink of—_ “You couldn’t have just called me up for a run or something?”_

_She laughs. “I don’t think that would have done the trick.”_

_Shiro sighs. Wipes sweat from his forehead._

_“You’re good with the staff,” she acknowledges._

_“My parents,” he begins explaining, but his throat closes too quickly, his eyes become hot. He coughs. “My parents enrolled me in bojutsu classes when I was young. I carried a lot of those techniques into my Garrison training.”_

_“I wished you hadn’t given up so easily.”_

_He stares at her. “Excuse me?”_

_“Just now,” she says, calm. “I wanted to keep sparring.” Allura laughs again, short and sharp enough to know how meaningless it is. “Sorry. I guess I have my own problems to work through.”_

_“You can talk,” Shiro offers. “If you want to.”_

_She hesitates. “Do you remember,” Allura says, “just before the lions entered the Milky Way, that strike of energy that hit us?”_

_Shiro nods. “Nearly tore you guys apart, I heard.”_

_“As we floated through space, Keith said something that—” the mention of him sends shivers through Shiro’s body. He found himself wondering, often, as he sat in his office sorting through documents, what pocket of space Keith was exploring at the same time. “—that at the time sounded absolutely insane. And I never believed it for a second,” she says. “Not in the months we spent in the Garrison preparing for war, especially not during the fight against Honerva. I thought we were unbreakable, Shiro._

_“I understand that we all have responsibilities. But now I’m here with Lance and we’re lucky if we get to see Pidge and Hunk once a deca-phoeb. You, it’s out of the question, unless I feign a quiznaking emergency. I don’t have to be on Earth to know that you’re holed up in your office all day, Shiro. And Keith—” her eyes fall to the floor._

_“No one knows where in the known universe Keith is. Well, we just proved his point, I suppose.”_

_Shiro listens to her._

_A peculiar thing—he always sees the astral plane when he thinks of Keith. But it isn’t Shiro himself trapped there. It’s Keith, in red paladin armor, holding his helmet at his hip. Just looking out at infinity._

_“It’s foolish,” Shiro says. Allura’s vehement gaze locks on him. “It was foolish to think that we could ever be kept together beyond the war. Maybe Keith was the only sane one of us all.”_

_She is incredulous. “How can you say that?”_

_Shiro rises to his feet, fixes the cuffs of his Garrison uniform and makes his way towards the exit._

_“You once told him,” a husky voice says when he lays a hand on the door, “that you’d never give up on him.”_

_Shiro’s brows knit—in pain, in frustration, he can’t tell. He doesn’t turn. “He told you that?”_

_“I held your soul within my body, Shiro. For a thin sliver of time I felt every fibre of your being pulse through mine, and do you want to know what, in your mind, your whole being, in that one dobosh, what the most prominent thing was? The one constant—”_

_“The man you honored then is not the man you see now.” Allura’s words feel strange on his tongue but, also, sickeningly reassuring. Shiro pushes the door open. Pauses. “Congratulations on the engagement.”_

_It isn’t the first time he’s walked out—of a room, a relationship, a home, a body. It probably won’t be the last. A fact that soothes him to a cool calm and drags him under a terrifying wave of fear._

—

Keith woke up to a stiff ache in his limbs and Shiro’s hand on his shoulder. 

The hand removed itself as soon as he opened his eyes. “We’re here,” Shiro said. _Where?_ Keith wanted to ask, if he could find his voice somewhere amongst his grogginess, until he remembered. “And I think the Blades are rather suspicious of a rebel fighter landing in their territory.” 

Keith jumped to his feet and Shiro, not ready for the sudden movement, stepped back. Without a word he pulled the sliding door open, momentarily taken aback by the dust clouding the air and the strong dry earthiness wafting through the air. And Krolia. 

He ran out and crashed into her. Strong arms wrapped around his frame, nearly lifting him off the ground, and he felt soft fur brush his ears as she nosed his hood down. “I missed you, kit,” she said into his hair. Keith nearly wanted to sob into her, in her arms—she’d hold him forever, he knew—but there were Blades on either side watching them, so he let go of his mother. 

“Where is he?” Keith asked immediately. Distantly, he acknowledged their surroundings—the base was located on the outskirts of the city, its northern end flanked by deep canyons made of rock the color of blood. Tgalv peeked just above the horizon, washing the gorges in dull tangerine. If it were any other day he’d stand here and marvel at the landforms’ beauty. 

“He’s here at the base,” Krolia told him. “We put him in a healing pod, but—” Keith’s stomach lurched forward. Always but. “—he hasn’t been responding so far.” She squeezed his shoulder and released a shaky breath. “It must have been difficult to travel all the way here alone.” 

Keith’s breath caught. “I—I didn’t.” 

When Krolia gave him a questioning look, Keith sighed and returned to the fighter, looking at Shiro through the open door. He was standing awkwardly to the side of the entrance, out of view from the outside. Startled by Keith, Shiro stumbled out of the shuttle, looking like a deer caught in headlights. Daibazaal was new to him, the ground under his feet too rough and the air too stifling, but the base took up most of his line of sight and it was huge. The entrance, surrounded by Blades standing ramrod straight with hilts peeking over their shoulders, was marked twin metal structures protruding from the earth, almost resembling scimitars in the way they ended in a sharp curve. Then, gaze settling over her eight-foot-tall length, he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Krolia—she stopped attending the annual Balls, probably because, he realized now, of Keith—and her height and claws and fixed stare were just as threatening as they always had been. 

Krolia couldn’t hide her surprise, even as a highly-trained scout, and her expression flitted from shock to anger to its usual sternness. “Admiral Shirogane,” she said, voice dropping a register. “What a surprise, seeing you here on my home planet.” 

“Oh, you heard about—uh, I didn’t take the position,” he fumbled, “actually. Still Captain, I’m… afraid.” Shiro cleared his throat. Not that the Atlas was ever in use anymore, not that he worked at the Garrison anymore. Not that that was what he needed to be thinking about right now. Fuck, there were so many eyes on him all at once, everyone’s but Keith’s. _My home planet_. He offered a hand. “Good to see you, Krolia.” 

“Stay there,” Krolia told him, not casting a glance even slightly downward. When she spoke to Keith, her tone became instantly softer. “Come with me.” Shiro watched Blades stepped aside as they entered a double door that opened like jigsaw pieces being pulled apart. 

Inside, Krolia said nothing until she had to say _something_. 

“Keith—” 

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t do this. Not now,” he said, close to breaking, “please.” 

She had to observe him for a few seconds before nodding. None of the dozens of Blades, whether they were working or training or learning, in the base paid any mind to either of them. It must have been Krolia’s doing, and Keith was grateful for the lack of attention as Krolia led him through the base to the centre’s infirmary. 

Most of the beds were empty, and all of the healing pods certainly were, except for one. Keith couldn’t keep it together anymore once he saw Kosmo’s body. He didn’t _know_ he was going to cry. It was never a way for him to express how he was feeling—not when his father died, not when the Garrison announced the Kerberos pilot error, not when Shiro was barely clinging onto life after Allura restored his soul. 

It wasn’t that he fell to the floor in pure hysteria. It was a quiet rumbling, starting from his chest and working its way into his throat, the tremble of his jaw, the quaking of his gloved hands as they clutched uselessly at the edges of the healing pod. It was fur charred to black and a matted mane and the massive burn wound stretching from Kosmo’s hind leg and wrapping around his neck. It was family. It was war and bloodshed, and it was blue and red and green and yellow and black, it was periods of nothingness upon nothingness upon nothingness and then hope and home, and it was now. It was six years. It had been. 

Had it really? 

Warm hands folded over his shoulders. They brought him back to land. Still, Keith leaned away from them, pounded fists over the healing pod and just cried. 

“Do you need some space?” Krolia asked. 

“Yes,” the lie pushed its way out of his mouth, stomach sinking as he took in a hitched breath. “Please,” he added. 

She nodded. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but I have to be on a shuttle to the other side of Daibazaal in a few vargas. A base was infiltrated and an investigation must be started as soon as possible.” Keith was already impermeable to her words. Krolia released his shaking shoulders, and the room became jarringly cold. “I’ll be on my way.” 

He didn’t have to hear footsteps to know she had already slunk away. 

He pressed his forehead to the glass, closed his eyes. “Please. I can’t lose you, too.” 

Please. 

Please. 

Please. 

Keith didn’t know how much time he spent hunched over the pod, the same whispered words tumbling past his lips over and over as he lost himself in Kosmo’s face, where most of his indigo fur was still intact. 

He did know that approaching steps weren’t space. 

They were a monster from his night terrors closing in on him. Black shapeless arms enveloping his body before they both dissipated into the void. 

“Get out,” Keith rasped, because Shiro did _not_ get to see him like this. 

“Krolia said I should say my farewells. And it’s the least I owe you. So I—” 

“Just get—” he let go of a heavy sob, dragging a rough hand over his face. “Get out. Get—” air, where was the air? “—why wasn’t I there? He wasn’t able to teleport himself out.” He found the words falling out of his mouth. “God,” Keith cried, squeezing his eyes shut, “he was just trying to help. Why wasn’t I there?” 

Grief and guilt were so, so foreign to Shiro. Anything past being mildly upset was, really. He was frozen in place for a second, and scooting a stool over to where Keith stood and suggestively pushing him towards it felt robotic, like he was a computer combing through old memories and commands just to remember how to be human. 

“You couldn’t have known,” Shiro said, and when he placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder it took everything for Keith not to lean into his touch, because, goddamn, Shiro had treated him like an unwanted dog for a year and now he was here and trying to do God knows what. 

Keith shook the hand off his shoulder and it fell obediently back to Shiro. He kept his head against the pod, just watched his ragged breath fog up the glass. 

“You couldn’t have known,” Shiro said again, softer, though Keith would never look at him. Shiro faced the pod and Keith could only imagine, from Shiro’s quieted breathing, what he was thinking, expecting him to mutter _Jesus_ under his breath or some other horrified reaction. 

“And I don’t think anyone could have stopped him, either,” Shiro continued instead. It occurred to Keith that Shiro had pulled up a chair of his own, sitting a considerable distance away. “I don’t have much right to be saying all this. But Kosmo has always been loyal to those he loves. He’d do anything,” Shiro said, “for them.” 

Keith didn’t respond. 

They sat in silence for hours, maybe even a day—the incessant, blinding white lights flickering overhead kept time a mystery, and it was all a blur to Keith, watching Kosmo’s vitals fluctuate and trying to listen to the physician who came in to explain what was happening, the severity of his injuries, even though Keith was pretty sure he didn’t know how to treat animals, let alone cosmic wolves. 

He was oblivious to the growing tension settling in his shoulders or the stiffness in his legs, burning eyes never leaving Kosmo. Constantly, he was prepared for the scrape of metal against the floor as Shiro would push his chair back, stand and mumble something not good enough for goodbye, and walk out, leaving Keith to wonder how many years Shiro would go without a word to him this time. 

Except Shiro didn’t leave. He sat there, watching Kosmo with the same intensity, if not with more. 

And then he said: “He always stole my undershirts.” 

Slowly, Keith found Shiro’s face. Shiro’s mouth quirked up in the slightest smile. He continued watching Kosmo as he spoke. 

“I thought I was going insane for a while, because they just _kept_ disappearing, and I’d always have to ask for more.” Shiro chuckled breezily, cheeks rounding as his smile grew. “And then one day I caught him in my quarters, mid-undershirt-heist. And he just stood there, with the white shirt drenched in slobber in his mouth, staring straight at me.” 

Keith was going to cry again. 

“Then he teleported himself out, taking the shirt with him. I think I laughed for a solid five minutes afterward, half from the hilarity of the entire situation, and the other half from relief that I wasn’t actually crazy. At least, not in that regard.” 

“Damn it,” Keith breathed, averting his gaze right before Shiro, beginning to pale, tried to capture it. “Fuck.” He blinked the tears back into submission. “_Fuck_—” 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro rushed, _I don’t know how to do this_, “was that—was that bad? I mean was I, was that too uncalled for?” 

“No, no, just—” Keith made a noise close to a stifled choke. It wasn’t bad. Because he could see it now, Kosmo’s grin as he drooled all over the shirt and vaporized into glimmery blue dust, God, it wasn’t bad at all, but given to him by the wrong hands. “No.” 

Shiro’s eyes dropped quickly to Keith’s knuckles, turning white in his lap and then pinking up again once Keith unclenched them, before they searched his face. “Okay.” 

The next time the doctor came around, Shiro stood, matching Keith’s lightning speed. He informed them that his vitals were improving, something about new skin beginning to grow and latch onto blood vessels, something about a graft. But Keith heard only one word—recovering. Kosmo was stable, and recovering. 

“When will he wake up?” Keith asked. 

He sucked his teeth. “Hard to say. Hopefully within the next movement.” 

Keith somehow got a thank you out there, and the doctor gave a shrug before going to check up on a bed-ridden patient. 

_This is good, right?_ Keith breathed in and out deeply, turning back to his space wolf. _This is good?_

“It is,” Shiro said. Oh. “It’s really good news.” 

A shuddering breath was expelled from Keith. He was prepared to bury Kosmo, prepared for the worst possible outcome, and now—now things could be okay. They were okay. He was okay. 

That also meant that, soon, he would have to return to the stars. As much as he wanted to be there when Kosmo awakened, he had committed himself to the mission, and having already abandoned his crew, Keith couldn’t afford to stay any longer than he had. 

He sighed, watching Kosmo through the glass barrier and just wanting to see his goofy, fangy smile again. When Keith looked up, Shiro wasn’t there anymore—Keith turned, finds the other man at the doorway of the infirmary, a strange softness written over his features, in the way his eyes looked like they were opening up to him. Keith wondered, a flicker of thought, what he could pull out of them if he reached in far enough. _Come on_, they said, and Keith knew, however unfair it might have been, Shiro knew he had to go. _Galaxies are waiting on you._

—

Keith didn’t know how Shiro ended up walking him to his apartment. 

Shiro had a shitty excuse—something about Keith’s awareness of his surroundings being more compromised with his lack of sleep—and Keith didn’t have the energy to fight him. 

Sanguine skies of the early morning melted into the backdrop of the cityscape as they entered the core of this territory of Daibazaal. In the inner city, towering metal spires shot up from the ground like knives, and under their feet streaks of purple light set into the paved roads lit the path. Unlike the rolling emptiness of the canyons near the base Shiro barely had time to absorb when they first landed, in the waking city Galra of all shapes and sizes thronged the streets—they looked in awe at the Senior Blade of Marmora, and then hushed whispers began to thread between them once they noticed the man, in battered up armor and dragging boots, walking alongside him. 

Mostly, Shiro shuffled quietly beside Keith, except when a building was too otherworldly not to lag behind and marvel at. One that looked like glass hexagonal prisms stacked jaggedly over one another, which then morphed into spheres, and then a singular icosahedron. 

“A major tech firm,” Keith said, not stopping. Shiro looked at him. “They helped us redesign the Blades base here on Daibazaal, so the exterior of the base is coded to appear however we want it to.” 

Shiro whistled beside him. “The Blades have come a long way—that base was at least five times the size of the Garrison. This planet has, too.” 

“Are you surprised?” 

As the number of skyscrapers began to dwindle into rows of two-storey brick apartments and the paved path beneath them turned to dry, red dirt that sent puffs of dust up with every step, the pang of something so far away settled itself in Keith’s chest—_home._

“No,” Shiro said, “not at all.” 

When he disappeared from Keith’s periphery, Keith knew Shiro began to lag behind again. 

Keith turned to look over his shoulder. The growing purple glow of the city fanned out behind Shiro’s form, his figure all sharp curves and shadows and this was terribly familiar, wasn’t it, Keith could almost feel the thrum of his pounding heart against the hard shell of paladin armor. 

His fangs digging into his lower lip. The taste of iron and smoke. 

_That’s the Keith I remember._

Sparks and heat and white hot beams following him, looking to kill him, and the bottomless pit of space all around. It would have been easy to give up, because space always won, because he’d just be a forgotten speck lost in the rubble of war. 

_You don’t have to fight anymore._

_By now, the team’s already gone._

_I saw to it myself._

“Catch up,” Keith snapped, just to bring himself out of it before Shiro could ask him if he was okay. More than half a decade ago, he’d only just be biting back _old timer_. 

Shiro followed him back to his apartment, wordlessly observing how each passing building looked more broken than the next, waiting to collapse in on themselves. He couldn’t say he was surprised, exactly—he should have known that image he had of a Senior Blade, swiveling around on a chair to look out the window overlooking the entire city as if he owned it, was so not Keith, who spent years living in the scrubby desert as a child and then another after being booted from the Garrison. So, really, Shiro should have done a better job hiding the cringe growing with each creak of the steps leading up to his apartment, the momentary fixation he had on the dim, flickering sconces barely lighting the hallway, the way he nearly crashed into Keith when the other man stopped in front of a door looking ready to fall off its hinges. 

“Oh,” Shiro said, taking a step backward. Keith opened the door before turning and holding the doorknob behind him, the terrible lighting playing with the shadow of his mouth like he could never decide on what emotion to display. 

_This is it_, Keith would think, but somehow, that felt too resolute. 

Keith shoved a hand through his hair—all of it, unbraided. Jesus. “How terrible do I look?” he muttered, eyes crinkling with a sour smile. 

“Can’t be as bad as me,” Shiro said. 

Keith glanced at him irritatingly, thinking his question was obviously rhetorical, but then he saw sweat slick hair and a greening cheek, battered armor adorned with scratches and dents up and down a slackened body. A tired, tired smile, just barely holding itself together. 

That’s what it was, wasn’t it, _exhaustion_. And it was strange to put it all together, because Shiro was the Garrison’s star child. The most decorated pilot in America, an Adonis with Herculean strength and a heart of gold. But he wasn’t at the Garrison. He was here, and tomorrow he’d be there, and then he’d be all over the place, and Keith could see it so clearly. Shiro was treading the choppy waters of the ocean. He was drowning. 

On the day of Shiro’s wedding, which he spent limp on his mattress, counting his breaths and losing himself in the stained ceiling overhead; in the months that would follow, trying to figure out how much he needed to mold himself into someone new just to fit in the planet of his people; covering thousands of lightyears a day to reach backwater planets forgotten in the universal relief effort—it was easy to slip into the chimera that Shiro was nothing but an object, a distant _something_ of the past. Keith always fought with himself like that because, God, for so long Shiro had been real—_they were real_, or so he thought, or so he wanted to forget. Stamp out every moment they had ever shared under his feet. 

Keith’s heart pumped steadily in his chest. 

Shiro looked more human than ever. 

A year of torture marred the bridge of his nose. A lifetime’s worth of pain roiled behind those eyes. 

Because Keith couldn’t possibly say anything else on his mind: “Early shuttle tomorrow morning.” 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said, somehow heavy and light and earnest and skittish all at once, “Keith, for everything. I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, I just—I needed you to know.” 

“Yeah?” Keith found himself arching an eyebrow. And while he had expected those words to knock the wind out of him, having thought of a thousand different scenarios of Shiro speaking them, his reaction surprised even himself as he leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, crossed his arms easily. “You could not be more selfish.” 

Shiro’s chest heaved, fell heavily. Keith cocked his head to the side, the beginnings of a smirk forming on his lips. Shiro swore his eyes glinted, in the blossoming light of day, sharp Galra gold. “And you’ve said it now, haven’t you? You got what you came for. The funny thing is, I used to be able to do this all day.” It was almost like before, after the war, their relationship teeter-tottering between constipation and silence—except now Keith held the reigns, and he wasn’t sure if he loved or hated the adrenaline rush it sent through his veins. 

The line between Shiro’s brows deepened. He had to push the urge to shove Keith back, kick the door closed behind them, down his throat. “Do what?” 

Keith watched him and chased the words away. “I shouldn’t have locked you up,” Keith said, instead. 

Shiro shifted on his feet. “I deserved it.” 

Keith shook his head. “You never deserve to have that pain brought back up again,” he said immediately, “and I’m sor—” he caught himself, swallowing, laughing in spite of himself. Gold poured out through the window at the end of the hall, and as Shiro basked so brokenly in that warm light, Keith felt like he was seeing double—this was the young black-haired pilot who had given Keith _everything_, and yet he was the same person who tore Keith apart, seam by seam. 

Keith had ought to know that. 

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, now, fully meaning it. “I’m sorry for that.” 

Before Shiro could say anything, Keith’s mouth quirked up softly. 

Shiro hadn’t seen that smile in years. It nearly made him fall to his knees. 

“Goodbye, Shiro.” 

He thought he heard those words. 

A second later, he was staring at a metal door. Scratched up and rusting. 

The only sound that followed him down the hall was the heels of his Atlas flight suit clacking against the brick floor. 

—

Keith studied his reflection in the water-stained mirror of his tiny washroom. He pressed his thighs closer into the metal sink. 

His mind wandered back to Shiro lying half-naked on the infirmary bed. Skin awash with the harsh light, left hand vacant, finger pale where a ring used to constrict it. 

He traced the scar on his cheek, where Shiro—no, it wasn’t Shiro—had split his face open. 

He hadn’t actually really looked at it the past seven years—it was like background noise, just another thing he was used to. He took note of the silvery sheen filming the blotchy pink and red slash. It must have hurt. 

He tried to remember the searing pain and found that he couldn’t. 

_I love you_, he’d said. 

—

_“Was it wrong of me to think that they would wed first?”_

_“Uh, yes,” Lance says, “because frankly I had planned to propose as soon as the all-clear was given on Altea’s reconstruction.”_

_“Lance.”_

_He sighs, resting his arms above her waist. “No. No, you weren’t wrong. I don’t think any of us imagined… that what’s happening right now would ever happen.”_

_Allura keeps quiet for a pensive moment. She sees Shiro, shoulders hunched as he walks out on her, repeating her own words in a way that sends chills down her spine._

_“But if Shiro’s happy, we can’t blame him,” Lance continues. “Right?”_

_“Even at Keith’s expense?” She doesn’t mean to say the words aloud. It just comes out. With Lance, it’s always easy._

_She rises from where they are seated, brushing Lance aside and approaching the window of their chamber. Hills upon hills of flowered meadows._

_“When I think about Voltron, it always takes me back to my father,” she says. “Lance, we’re so broken.”_

_“What?”_

_“Were we only in it together for the fight?” Allura turns to look at him, and it scares him how unreadable and clouded her eyes have become. “Were we bound to leave each other?”_

_And he wishes he doesn’t know what she is talking about, but he does. He knows it so well, and he can’t lie and say he hasn’t thought about it, too._

_“Maybe Alfor was wrong,” Allura says, and then it’s pain that strikes her face next, in such a sudden force that Lance can’t anticipate the brokenness in her voice. “Or perhaps we just failed him.”_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heed the new tags (masturbation, brief desc of anal sex) ALSO SHIRO REDEMPTION COMING LATER, i love him and it's what he deserves.

_The ship looks like an animal, black and sleek and sharp, feral and cutting through the vacuum of space._

_The Garrison shuttle, stolen just about a day ago, dips toward where Pidge said the hangar door was located. His heart races._

_Closer, closer now. Closer._

_If this is the maw, he is ready to be eaten alive._

_He decides to hold his breath as he guns the engine and the shuttle suddenly rockets upward. The impact thrashes him around, throwing him to the ground as sparks fill the viewport. And then, as he gasps for air and hauls himself up. He ignores the throbbing pain lancing through his lower rib cage, and, with his Altean hand, pulls the metal of the smashed in door open._

_He’s ready for the first guard that clashes into him. He subdues with frightening ease._

_He leaves the last one conscious, so he can ask him where Captain Kogane is._

_It doesn’t roll off easily off his tongue._

_And seeing him in the flesh is even harder to swallow._

_Keith looks different. He looks good, he always has._

_Broader, across the shoulders; stronger, in the way he holds his stance steady; sharper, in his focus on Shiro._

_Keith wants to kill, and Shiro is okay with that._

_He is barking something in a foreign language Shiro doesn’t understand. He forgot that Keith picked up Galran._

_Keith’s mask flips back. That midnight violet is just as stunning as it was when they were just Garrison puppets._

_He gives a stupid response. He knows it will pull what he wants out of Keith: drive. And when Keith lunges for him, he knows he has won._

_Regret comes next when every blow thrashes his bones around until he can’t stand anymore. Keith is agile and quick to act, and Shiro knows he won’t stop until he’s dead._

_It’s a good pain, almost._

_He has fucked this kid up in so many more ways than one. As Keith’s fangs bare as he snarls at him, he wishes Keith would have exploded at him like this when they were on Earth. It would have been better than nothing._

_He wonders what life would be like if he hadn’t met Keith at all._

_If just one smidge in their timeline was nudged, everything would be different._

_He lets Keith lift him off the ground, because if he’s going to die by anyone’s hand, he deserves for it to be Keith. Shiro knows he has gone far too deep to be rescued. Even Keith could not save him now._

_He accepts the metal bracelets that clink around his wrists and the shove that comes from one of Keith’s crewmembers. He counts his breaths when the cramped cell gets to be too much._

_No, he was wrong. He doesn’t deserve for it to be Keith at all._

—

“I’ll request an appointment for you with Dr. Han—she’s excellent, she’s dealt with all sorts of cases. She’s all booked up for this month, though, so—” he sighed, rough “—I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. But you can always come by my office if you need someone to talk to.” 

“Thanks, Shirogane.” Kalan shook his head. “And don’t beat yourself up about the waitlist. Trust me, all of us think you’re doing the best you can. Like you said, some things are out of our control, right?” 

“Right,” Shiro said, offering a dry smile in return. “I’ll see you around?” 

“Yeah, man.” 

“Take care of yourself.” 

“Got it. You, too, Shirogane. _Really_.” 

“I will.” 

The man stood up from where he was seated—back of the office, against the wall—to leave. Shiro took a second to expel another breath before gathering his things. Always the last one to leave the centre, Shiro was tasked with turning off all the lights and locking up. 

What came next was routine. 

The cool city air would sting his eyes. It always did. 

He would chuck the keys into his pocket and listen to them jangle as his feet began moving on their own accord. 

They would bring him through the emptying streets, where other people were closing their businesses and heading home for the night, and the further he would go down this path ingrained into his footsteps his body became hungrier and hungrier, unsatiated until a glass of blue liquid was slid over to him. 

He would release a grateful sigh and down the shot. His face would no longer contort at the bitter spice of it. Weird to think that humans were now regularly consuming alien mead, Shiro would muse, and crates of human alcohol were being shipped out of Earth. 

Shiro would beckon for another. 

He would survey tonight’s crowd—sweat slick bodies pressed against each other, faces painted in the hazy blue light. Mostly human, some not. Sometimes it would be the light catching someone’s cheekbone. Sometimes it would be the hair, or the voice, or how their slender fingers tapped against the counter. But it didn’t matter. Anyone would go home with him. 

Another drink and he’d be fumbling his way through his apartment, senses washed away by alcohol. Sometimes not choosing wisely would have him pinned to his wall by six massive limbs and a tail squeezed around his waist and he wouldn’t even know what was going inside him, but most nights, Shiro did the fucking. 

A string of bruising mouths and accompanying teeth against skin and he’d be pounding them into his bed over and over, trying to remember their names as he did so but ending up thinking of someone else’s. He would wish he had cotton stuffed in his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear the brutal sounds escaping both their throats. 

When he would come with that name on his lips, he’d get what he knew he would—heavy arms shoving him backward, flying spit and profanities, the angry tossing-on of clothes previously thrown to the ground. _I fucking knew it. I should have fucking listened to them, God, they all said you’re still hung up over that ghost paladin and I didn’t believe them. Fuck you. You’re pathetic._

And he wouldn’t defend himself, or the man he was hopelessly thinking of. There was nothing to deny about himself. He could never bring himself to talk about Keith. The sound of the front door slamming was always a relief. 

He’d jerk himself off into the night until he was too overstimulated to breathe, until his wrist ached and his body writhed over stained bedsheets. Other nights, the hole in his chest was too all-consuming, and he would choke on dry sobs waiting for sleep to come. 

It did, eventually. 

—

Ilun and Acxa came to a stop at the cliffside, bikes kicking up a dust storm. They were all laughter and dirt and sunset glow smiles, and as he looked out into the reddening sky Keith couldn’t smother that swell of _something good_ in his stomach. 

Keith had brushed up on his hoverbike skills here, flying ahead of his fellow Blades instead of tailing behind Shiro, had felt the wind slash at his skin as he narrowly avoided smashing his skull against rock, screaming at the others to catch up. _If you can_, he’d add, pressing himself to the very edge of his seat and putting all his weight into the machine’s thrust. 

He had done the same today, just with a little less of that competitive edge, only because he had Kosmo on the back of his bike. 

Yeah, it probably wasn’t a good idea to take a recovering wolf out into the canyons, but he couldn’t do much when Kosmo kept teleporting himself behind him every time he got his hoverbike revved up. 

“Fuck, wish you guys were here for another day,” Ilun was grumbling, throwing her hood back as Acxa climbed off her bike. 

Daibazaal was only supposed to be a pit stop for them in between their last mission and the next, but somehow Keith had squeezed in the time for a ride. The crew had been thrown into a whirlwind of missions the past three months and felt as if they didn’t even have a chance for breath. Keith couldn’t say he wasn’t happy about it, though—quite the opposite. He liked the push he felt from one galaxy to the next. He liked busying himself and leaving a planet knowing they had done right by its people. 

Acxa knocked her shoulder against Ilun's. “Come on. You’re in charge of the biggest restoration crew here and you’re getting all mopey.” 

“That’s what I’m saying,” she stressed. “Why don’t you join us? Why space?” She turned to Keith, who was leaned into his bike and scritching Kosmo’s head. 

“Because people,” Keith said, “matter, Ilun. Everyone’s forgetting about them.” 

“Oh, okay, go ahead and make me feel like a jerk, now.” Ilun chuckled lightly. A sigh followed. “I know. And I’m sorry, if you’re still mad about—” 

“No. I get it. Mission over self. We were different soldiers back then.” 

Ilun released a breath into the cool evening air. 

“That got heavy,” Acxa muttered, shifting on her feet. She swung an easy leg over the seat of her bike. “Enough sad talk. Let’s get going.” 

Keith let his bike glide on the wind on the ride back to the base, barely keeping the throttle pulled back. The appreciative grumbling in Kosmo’s chest against his back made a smile settle permanently on his lips. 

The wind felt good in his face. 

He watched as Acxa dove straight down into the gorges, disappearing beyond the edge of rock. 

When he was training some of the new recruits, Keith had taken them out to the canyon to practice their head-first dives. There was some doubt amongst the newer Blades, but Acxa had just started her bike up and sent it straight over the edge, leaving a trail of dust and a group of flabbergasted juniors. 

Keith had already planned on asking her to join his team, but that just made him wonder why he'd waited so long. 

She never needed anyone else. The roar of her machine reverberating through the twisting canyon paths was telling enough—and a challenge. 

Keith grinned behind his mask. “Go get her, Ilun,” he said, quiet into the band around his wrist. Ilun’s bike surged forward before it dipped out of sight, too. 

Keith didn’t know how the next few days would play out. Nerves surged up and through him, rooted themselves deep in his stomach and impossible to quell, and when he closed his eyes his brain spun up faces that he hadn’t seen in more than half a decade. 

It started with a call from Kolivan. Earth needed a Galra ambassador to attend the annual summit, and no one else had seen how much the Coalition had been lacking than the senior blade hitting every hidden pinpoint on the universal map. Of course Keith had thought about what it meant when he agreed to go. 

He knew that he’d take the long way back to the base, though, with Kosmo sitting with him. He knew the purr of the engine. He knew that his body ached from how intense their work had been lately, knew he probably needed to see a professional about the knots in his shoulders and knew he’d put it off until later. He knew he’d get to see these blazing skies melt into charcoal. It was him and his space wolf and his bike and the planet and that would be, he decided somewhat unconsciously, enough. 

When he boarded the _Koz’koren_ in the middle of the night, with Acxa and Yaikil and a couple sentries in tow, when he stepped into the bridge and breathed in deep as lights and screens flickered on, Keith was ready. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this update is SO late, can't say it'll be worth the wait but nevertheless here it is
> 
> if you've stuck around i really appreciate it and sorry for the long ass wait :))

The solar system looked the same, but it was almost like seeing it for the first time. 

He’d forgotten how small it was. The Koz’koren could blaze past this tiny pocket of the universe in a minute and the crew would think nothing of it. 

“A dobosh, Captain.” 

Keith could not help that his feet broke from their invisible chains to the helm as he approached the viewport. White clouds. Blue sky. A desert the color of rust where he had grown up, an ocean made of sand dunes where he’d honed—many things, actually. 

There was no longer a particle barrier surrounding the institution. It definitely didn’t used to have that building that, aerially, looked like two concentric G’s, nor did it the blue particle barrier forming a dome-like arena, inside of which fighter jets buzzed around like trapped flies. A new simulation deck, he supposed. 

The place had changed. Maybe they had grown up together. 

“Banking left” snapped him back into focus. 

Far below them, steel hangar doors began to slide open. 

“Incoming comm.” 

“Open a line.” 

“Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s good to have you with us, Captain Kogane.” 

—

He couldn’t feel the concrete beneath his boots. It must have been adrenaline that carried him forward. 

Acxa said something beside him. Her gait was eager, hard to contain, and it was easy to guess why. 

His eyes followed retired warbirds to jets he didn’t recognize, swept the steel trusses lining the high ceiling, until— 

The Admiral—the tall, built woman had to be her, and if the four golden stripes weren’t telling enough her tight-lipped stare certainly was—stood at the junction where the hangar joined the base, hands behind her back. Beside her, a familiar face, warm and wide-eyed. Beside _her_, a man in a black jacket with a bandana under his hair. 

“Acxa,” Veronica said, running forward at the same time the Commander did. Out of his periphery, Keith saw Veronica lift Acxa off her feet. 

Hunk’s face immediately crumpled, which was no surprise, but then Keith’s felt his start to do the same. “Dude, come _here_,” Hunk said, and even as it wobbled his voice sounded an octave deeper. Hunk held his arms out and Keith naturally stepped into them, letting strong arms envelope him. 

“Damnit,” Keith whispered into his shoulder, grasping his back and blinking furiously. “I placed bets with my crew that I wouldn’t cry.” 

Hunk pulled back, then, and Keith really got to see how much he changed, and how much he didn’t. Uncut bangs still swayed over his teary eyes, but, no longer the seventeen-year-old cadet escapee, stubble covered his chin and rose to his ears, and every line and curve of his features was harder, shaped by years of battle and diplomacy. Still, after all that time his face was the friendliest in the universe. His smile alone chased any doubt that Keith had in being accepted by him away. 

“Crew?” Hunk echoed. 

Keith chuckled, gesturing behind him. “Yeah. Picked up a few strays along the way.” 

“_Hey_,” Acxa said, joining them with her arm wrapped around Veronica’s waist. They were all smiles even as Acxa chided Keith. 

Yaikil appeared suddenly beside them, with a certain space wolf in his arms, as teleportation glimmer dissolved into the air. “He wouldn’t—” as soon as he spotted Hunk, Kosmo wriggled out of his grasp onto the ground “—let me leave until I carried him.” 

“Oh my God, did he get even bigger?” Hunk’s eyes widened as Kosmo tackled him to the ground and he fell laughing and groaning under the wolf’s weight. When the drool-slick kisses died down, Hunk managed to get up. He shook his head, looking Keith up and down. “I can’t believe you’re here, Keith. Actually _here_.” 

Something like bashfulness creeped up Keith’s neck. “Yeah,” he said, laughing a little nervously. “I—I can’t really believe it either. I can’t imagine how much has… changed.” 

“More than you might think,” the Admiral said. They turned to stare at her. She stuck out a hand for Keith to shake, which he realized he probably should have done earlier. “You’d be surprised, I’m sure, Captain Kogane. Galaxy Garrison has been at the forefront of Earth’s development.” 

“That shouldn’t come at the price of actual lives, though, should it?” 

Hunk’s eyes widened a bit at Keith’s sudden change in tone. The Admiral kept her gaze calm, not even a twitch elicited from her features. “Good timing, Captain.” She turned to the door, which hissed open for her, revealing a stretch of a hallway. “Meeting is just about to begin. Come with me.” 

The five of them, along with one adamant space wolf, followed Jager down hallways that, at first, weren’t familiar to Keith before a few passerby clad in Garrison uniform and orange-striped walls had his military school years slamming full force back into him. He shook those memories off as soon as they resurfaced. 

The crowded conference room was new, too, and far bigger than what he was used to. Cameras flashed at him as he was led to his seat up at the front where other ambassadors were already seated along the length of the table. Before them, rows upon rows of crescent tables took up the rest of the room, already filled with press and a few Garrison officials. Somehow along the way his crew and Hunk disappeared. 

He strained to find them amongst the crowd. Jager was already standing at the podium. “—not returned to Earth in six years,” he caught, and the room instantly became smaller, “so please give the Captain your warmest welcome.” Applause. 

An Olkari minister a few seats down began speaking into his microphone, giving a brief rundown of their technological advances post-war. They always started the summits out positively. Shiny new communities and climbing birth rates. Keith rehearsed his speech once more in his head. 

When he was only halfway through, all eyes turned onto him. Jager had moved to sit beside him, looking at him expectantly. Keith cleared his throat. 

“We have to stop hiding,” was the first thing out of his mouth. The room was stifling, and the people looked no less confused. He hadn’t done this in a _long_ time. “The Coalition,” he tried again, “was an alliance formed to bring peace. It was formed for people.” His brows scrunched. “But now the agenda that’s being pushed is more skewed than ever.” 

“Respectfully,” a voice interrupted. Keith leaned forward to stare at the Garrison lieutenant. “You haven’t seen our efforts firsthand. How long have you been absent, again?” 

“And you haven’t seen mine,” Keith replied. He turned back to the sea of journalists and cameramen. “Being away from Earth opened my eyes. It showed me just how much the Garrison was lacking.” 

A dozen journalists’ hands shot up. 

Jager: “We’re not taking questions at this time.” 

“Two weeks ago, my crew and I were forced to abandon a mission when we were alerted of an emergency happening two systems away.” He looked into the Admiral’s eyes. “There was a band of Honerva’s druids, growing in hiding for _six_ years, Admiral. They would have obliterated an entire planet if we hadn’t gotten to them in time. Hundreds of other Blades were needed as backup. Even then, we were nearly outnumbered.” Hushed voices rose around him as Jager’s stare hardened. 

Keith faced the reporters again. “Just looking around this room, I see a sore lack of diversity. We’ve concentrated all of our efforts towards getting Earth up on its feet again. The Coalition was made to be _interplanetary_. When will we make good on that promise?” 

“What do you propose?” someone asked. 

“I said no questions.” 

“Better communication,” Keith said. “More correspondence between all parties; especially the Galaxy Garrison. We hardly ever get through to the Garrison, and when we do the calls are cut short by yet another board meeting. This place can’t call itself just a military school anymore. The war started a universal evolution, and as one of the largest education and resource hubs, the Garrison has to keep up with that.” 

Jager, now with brows scrunched at him: “The Galra are one of the most advanced races in the universe. We’re putting just as much on the table as your people when it comes to relief efforts.” 

“Have you seen our planet?” Keith said. “The Blades are spread thin over huge swaths of territory, and that’s just on Daibazaal. Other planets aren’t so lucky, if you could even call that luck.” 

“Captain,” Jager interjected, “with all due respect, if you had kept up with our involvements, this could all be very civil.” He was being fucking civil. She allowed herself a smile. “The Garrison has been cooperating with multiple world leaders to reform how and where we expend our resources.” 

“Multiple reports,” said Keith, “dispute that claim. My team uncovered an encrypted file from last year’s annual Galaxy Garrison financial report.” 

“You want to help your people,” the lieutenant next to him said, “and we want the same for ours.” Under his breath, now, “I also didn’t leave this organization’s centre for fruitless charity work.” 

“Excuse me?” As he swiveled around, a face stopped him, and looking back was almost a reflex. 

He was staring at—a woman, he realized, she was a woman now. Still bespectacled. She was clacking away at the laptop in front of her, the orange light reflecting off her glasses. Her mouth was tugged flat. 

He couldn’t even be sure it was her; she was so far away. 

“_Alright_,” pressed the Admiral, “we should take a break.” 

From the corners of his eyes he watched others pack up folders and data pads into shoulder bags and walk out of the room. He watched the woman do the same. 

Keith followed her. 

A strange turmoil of sentimentality and pride fought with his senses when he walked out to crowds of officials, young and old, clad in orange uniforms. Keith remembered when the Garrison student body and military population combined filled up less than half a hangar. 

He kept his head ducked down as he weaved through them. 

The woman turned left, disappearing through a door next to a glass window marked _FACULTY LOUNGE_. 

Keith reached it—paused but not long enough to decide to turn back—and pushed it open. 

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here.” Keith looked into the challenging eyes of a young pilot who chucked a thumb at the sign. “Faculty only.” 

“It’s okay, Paras. He’s with me.” 

The pilot cocked an eyebrow before turning back to his coffee. 

Having set her bag down on the counter, Pidge was scouring an open fridge. “So all it took was one absent Galra official?” she said, smiling wryly to herself. She closed it, two cans in hand, and threw one behind her. 

Keith caught it. 

She turned. Her hair was still clipped short, just less unruly. Keith didn’t pretend he couldn’t see the grief in her eyes. “Shoulda taken one out years ago.” 

He set the can down on the counter as he stalked by it, watched her do the same, didn’t think wrapping his arms around her, and she was so much taller, and was she always that good at suffocating people? 

“I’m still angry with you.” Pidge’s voice was muffled against his chest. 

“I know,” Keith choked. She pulled him in closer, and, shit, he was crying again. But she was _here_ and Keith couldn’t help pressing a smile against her shoulder. “I missed you.” 

She pulled back and hastily wiped her cheeks. 

“Pidge—” 

“Hey, I’m gonna have to stop you right there,” she said severely, and his gaze dropped to her raised index finger. “We’ll talk later. Hunk will send you the address.” 

“And now?” 

A smile, the flicker of something old, young, devious. “We are going to murder these egotistical Garrison officials.” 

—

He forgot what it was like having to sit down for extended periods of time in a crowded room _while_ being expected to socialize. Their table was in the middle of the room so he could only hear what was going on, and that coupled with Hunk and Pidge seated across from him made him feel exposed, and even with the armor he wanted to hide his throat. 

Keith regretted not ordering one when the beers arrived, mustering an amused crook of the brow when Pidge took a sip. He just needed something to stop the hollowness chewing at him from the inside out—it was nervousness that he was wrong to think would fizzle out after the day’s conference ended. He and Pidge _had_ countered nearly every argument they brought up. When she would recite facts without even looking at her datapad, sending holographic projections of reports to everyone’s datapads and watching some of their poker faces falter, Keith thought he could catch the barest smug smile from her. The war had ended just for a new one to unfold there in that Garrison room, where hidden files and fierce debate were wielded like combat weapons. 

But the meeting ended and the pit inside him didn’t, and now he wasn’t sure how to face it. Currently small talk was still being exchanged—something about being late because of the traffic, how the restaurant was founded. 

Having grown used to the sound of nothing else but the deep thrum of the ship, the bar was all too mirthful and loud. 

Keith could sense something was up with Matt, too. He seemed fine at the Garrison, clapping Keith’s back almost as hard as Pidge had hugged him, but now he was shifting in the seat beside him, gaze flitting around the room and then back to the two people in front of him as if remembering their presence again. 

“The way the camera zoomed all up in his face when you pulled up those reports? I lost it.” Hunk snickered. “I wish I had been there.” 

Keith smiled at him and then down at his water. Pidge hadn’t taken her boring gaze off him since they arrived at the restaurant. 

“I didn’t believe Hunk when he said you were…” she laughed bitterly. Hunk sobered up at the change in atmosphere. “Don’t get me wrong, I knew _he_ wouldn’t lie. Six years muddies trust, I suppose.” 

“You told him where to find me,” Keith said for _Yeah, it really does_, although there was little venom in his tone. 

Pidge’s gaze shifted to meet his. She didn’t exactly look like a caught animal. “You didn’t,” she said, “send one message back. _One_. And _don’t_ say that they never got to you.” Her upper lip trembled with the ferocity of her snarl. Did you even listen to them? her eyes said, but she probably knew she didn’t need to ask. 

Keith pictured a map unfolding as they spoke, laying everything out and deciding where to go from there. He wondered how desperately Hunk and Matt wanted to change course. 

“Was the tracker in that box?” He wouldn’t tell her how many times he’d stuck those earbuds in, fell asleep to a sound so otherworldly he could never quite pinpoint what it resembled. 

“Tracker?” Hunk echoed. “You were—” 

Pidge just sighed. “I thought he was the only one who could bring you back, Keith. Or try to.” 

Matt’s eyes settled on his sister, almost questioning. Hunk just looked even more confused. “He? Who’s ‘he’?” 

Keith snorted. “The very reason I left Earth finds me in a galaxy thousands of lightyears away from here and I’m supposed to follow him all the way back?” 

Hunk’s mouth hung open as the pieces connected in his mind. 

“I was _desperate_,” Pidge whispered, leaning further over the table, “okay? The tracker was dying. I didn’t know if you were alive.” 

“Jesus, Pidge, how closely were you keeping tabs on me?” 

She slanted her gaze at him. Her fingers clenched around the edge of the table. “I didn’t want to lose you to space.” 

“You didn’t.” 

“What if I did? What if _we_ did?” Pidge didn’t bother keeping quiet anymore. “What if something happened to you and we couldn’t even—” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, hastily wiping tears away. “You can’t blame me,” she hissed, “for not wanting you dead.” 

Keith sighed. He decided not to ask if he could blame her for Shiro breaking into the ship. 

“I’m not here for him. I wanted to see everyone.” Keith couldn’t help that he averted everyone’s gaze. “I just… I needed to get away. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back, but I needed to do that on my own terms.” 

“We’re happy you’re here, Keith,” Matt said beside him, and he jumped a little at the gentle elbow knocking into his side. 

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed. “We’re always going to be here for you, you know that?” 

“Even after six years?” he meant to joke, but the words cracked in his throat a little and he found himself looking at Pidge. 

“Even after ten, or fifty, or a hundred,” Pidge muttered. She closed a hand around one of his. “I’m just glad you’re alive, you idiot. I’m sorry for acting so impulsively.” 

He was grateful for the darkness hiding the flush spread over his cheeks becoming wet when Matt swung an arm around his shoulders and Hunk took his other hand and said “We’ll always love you,” because, no, nothing had been miraculously patched and smoothed over, but it surely gave him some hope. 

—

_“You know your sister is the one who’s making me go.”_

_“No one is making you do anything,” Matt says, stepping forth to try to meet Shiro’s height and poking him square in the chest, “and don’t pretend like you didn’t have your own personal agenda when you agreed to it.”_ _“Believe whatever you want,” Shiro says through teeth. He glares at the hand on his chest and takes a dramatic step back. “Everyone else is just sitting around letting him float in space.”_

Untethered. 

Here on Earth, is it really that different for me? 

_He buries the thought and clasps his helmet in place. “I’m going to bring him back.”_

_“You’re treating this like a rescue mission. He doesn’t want to be found.”_

You’re right. You’re right. He never needed, never needs rescuing. 

Maybe it’s us. 

Maybe it’s me who needs the saving. 

_“We lost him too, Shiro. That’s the thing you forget. But the last thing he needs right now—”_

_Grinding of teeth. “You don’t know what he needs.”_

_“Yeah? And how can you—you, Takashi—say that you do?”_

I don’t know. 

_“You’re not the hero here, Takashi. No one needs you to be.”_

_“I’m going, Matt. I’m leaving.”_

—

Keith forgot that Matt had looked nervous earlier. He remembered, and realized why, when they were leaving. 

They all had so much to catch the other up on—newfound space quadrants and cultures, with a healthy sprinkle of near death experiences; the usual—but he couldn’t help but notice that Matt kept glancing at the clock at the wall, red numbers glaring in the dark. Keith followed his gaze. 

People were beginning to trickle towards a dance floor that he hadn’t noticed before. The later hours brought a shift in demographic—tired off the clock workers were sauntering out and the young nightlife flowed in. Some of them had to be cadets, he mused. 

The clock read 11:43. 

“We should leave,” Matt said. 

Hunk looked at Pidge, who looked at her brother. 

“Tired already?” Keith pushed back from the table, balancing his chair on two legs. “Could stand a couple more hours. Jet lag’s gonna keep me awake all night anyway.” 

Matt frowned and kept his eyes trained on Keith with, apparently, great difficulty. “The night scene isn’t always very pretty here.” 

Keith didn’t question it, choosing to trust him. They paid and, outside, Keith watched them a cab whisk his friends away. 

He had some place else to be. 

It all unfolded too slowly, then: Keith taking a step forward, someone walking too close at the same time. Both of them, two strangers, turning to the side as they passed to make room, to avoid the brushing of shoulders, as one does. 

Keith was met with a dress shirt, unbuttoned low enough to see the wide breadth of a chest, and when he chanced a glance upward and the stranger one downward, Keith wondered if it was the alcohol making him see things and slowing everything down—yet the moment was so jarring it sobered him up all at once. 

It never takes much to recognize that which you have memorized, does it? When you spend years trying to forget, when you take a road trip through the stars and rack up a mileage in the quintillions, what do you do when it is handed back to you, right there in front of you? Waiting, watching. 

Just a few months ago, the sight alone would have caused Keith to order his crew to take them to the furthest corner of space and begin the process all over again: the running, the hiding, the forgetting. But now he stared. His brain recognized this person. It could compute the nose and mouth and eyes and spit out a name—how could it not?—but it could not tell him why he was seeing this person in the flesh, in front of him. 

Shiro’s back met the door and he walked backward into the bar, facing Keith. Keith had difficulty discerning the expression on Shiro’s face. 

The music got louder, suddenly, or maybe Keith hadn’t been listening. Blue and purple and red flashed over the crowd. Keith watched Shiro’s hair catch all of it. He watched Shiro’s unreadable face. 

One in the chaos, one out in the cold. 

Shiro’s mouth hung open. Someone was coming onto him already, pushing him back and leaning close as Shiro took backward steps. He kept his eyes on Keith. 

That was when Keith understood what Matt had meant. 

“Is that Takashi Shirogane?” The voice was loud, purposeful, and not Keith’s—enough to make Shiro and Keith turn to its source. 

It belonged to someone in a group of shadows approaching him, and then the light hit them. Keith barely made out the grin of a man. 

“Holy shit,” the man shouted, “it really is true.” 

“I told you,” the man’s friend said. “He comes here every night looking for someone new.” _Every night?_ That must have been a lie. 

Shiro’s gaze flickered from face to face as a small circle formed around him. “A local legend of sorts.” The man came closer, closer, until his body was nearly flush with Shiro’s. Shiro stayed still as two others leaned in from behind. 

His feet were already moving ahead of his brain, approaching the group closing in on Shiro. The man’s mouth was moving next to Shiro’s ear. Darting between growing clusters of people, Keith’s Galra hearing kicked in time to hear: “Ever been _used_ before, old man?” 

Something hot flared in Keith’s chest. 

“Hey. _Leave him alone_.” 

The man, along with his group, turned and regarded Keith. “Calm down,” the man said as he took a step back from Shiro. Heads were starting to turn towards them. “We’re not doing anything he hasn’t asked for.” 

“He didn’t _ask_ you to touch him, did he?” Keith growled. 

“He already did,” another one said, “by coming here ’vry night and getting so hammered he can’t even—” 

“I would leave, if I were you,” Keith said, nudging his leather jacket aside to reveal the hilt of a blade protruding from his belt. He curled his hand deliberately around it, watching with a faint flicker of satisfaction as the group scattered. “Assholes,” he muttered, adjusting the collar of his jacket. 

Then his eyes landed on the man in front of him, who continued to regard him wordlessly, almost _curiously_. 

How many alternate realities had to coincide for them to meet here under these dingy colorful lights starting to give him a headache, Keith thought, but then he remembered—Shiro had stayed here, like everyone else. This was his home. 

At Shiro’s lack of response, or sign of any cognizance at all, Keith grabbed his hand and began dragging him out of the place. 

When they were outside, Keith whirled and glared at him. “It really isn’t fair, you know, that you get to break into my ship like a fucking madman and now that I stumble upon you either inebriated or brain damaged or both, you’re just gonna—” 

“You need to stop saving me,” Shiro muttered, looking at the pavement, and that shut Keith up first and made him burn next. 

“If you were enjoying yourself back there, then my _sincerest_ apologies,” Keith said, “for interrupting your moment.” 

Shiro stared at him. 

Keith paused to take Shiro in for the first time, his glasses and his unshaven face. He looked terribly civilian, but his mussed hair and unbuttoned collar made Keith wonder if he’d been somewhere before this. “Are you drunk already?” 

Shiro was still unsure this wasn’t a dream. He processed Keith’s question too late, tried to ignore the buzzing in his head, and offered a wobbly half-smile in response. It disappeared when Keith frowned. 

As the quiet stretched between them, for an unbearable second they were the Captain of the Atlas and the Black Paladin again. Unsure. So close but out of reach. 

Keith had told himself he would _not_ let this happen, had not come here to feel this way again. 

But then his mind crawled back to before, which it could never leave out—the Garrison, the quiet nights in the Castle, the restlessly still air before the war, and his equally restless heart. 

Something broken hung between them, and Keith had been avoiding its glare for too long. 

“Come on, if you don’t plan on going back there,” he said all in one breath, turning around and shoving his hands in his jacket and walking away. 

“What? Keith, where are you going?” 

Keith kept walking, and secretly he might’ve been glad Shiro was following closely behind—the thought of him being hounded by men all night was more than unsettling. 

Shiro wasn’t sure when he realized, but Keith was leading them farther and farther away from the heart of the city, until the dome of the sky widened and they could see the first buttes in the distance. The outskirts were dark and quiet, and Shiro had to ask himself again if this was real or if he was just following a phantom. 

“Keith,” he said, just to get a response, just to make sure. 

“We’re here.” 

Keith rounded the corner of the empty street and found the sleek machine waiting for him, hidden in the dark of an alley, just as the Holt siblings had promised. He felt bad for asking them to steal the bike from the hangars, but then again, they had agreed all too easily, all wicked grins. _It’s honestly funny that you’re so old and still don’t have a driver’s licence._ For vehicles that actually touched the ground at all times, anyway. 

Keith breathed a laugh. When he turned, Shiro was watching him from the front of the alley, a bit open-mouthed. 

“You can’t drive that in the streets.” 

“I know.” He couldn’t help that one side of his mouth quirked as he opened the trunk, fishing out his gloves and goggles. He swung his leg over the seat and revved up the machine, let it rumble through his body, the sound subsiding to a purr. “You’re not tired, are you?” 

Shiro evaluated the exhaustion settled deep in his bones and the relentless skittering beneath his skin. He could not soothe either. Keith wasn’t asking about that, anyhow. 

“Not really.” Shiro blinked behind his glasses and asked, “Why?” 

“Let’s find out,” Keith replied, almost softly. “When’s the last time you’ve been on one of these, anyway?” 

“Forever ago,” he huffed. It took Shiro a moment to understand what he was asking, and by then his head was swimming with it. He didn’t ask why, almost didn’t care why. Briefly he wondered if Keith was asking him not to be afraid, for once. 

“Extra goggles in the back.” 

He hadn’t been on a hover bike in years, and climbing on the seat behind Keith was a clumsy and awkward balancing act. “You’re going to fall like that,” Keith murmured, tucking his braid under his jacket. He felt Shiro pause and shivered as tentative arms came around his middle. Keith blinked into the darkness to ground himself. 

The bike hummed underneath them, waiting. Keith flicked the headlights on. 

And they barrelled out of the alley and into the streets under the wide, open sky. 

The wind crept beneath Shiro’s thin shirt immediately, streamed through his hair and filled his lungs. Still he inhaled deeper, let the cold staleness of the city burn his nostrils, like he needed it to live. He found himself clutching tight to Keith at first, unused to the thrill and the rush, and he wasn’t even the one driving—Shiro could picture Keith on any other night, black hair dragging behind him in the wind and fangs exposed in his grin, glinting under the moon. 

Shiro had quickly realized, as the civilian life settled upon his shoulders, that he found something new to be afraid of everyday. Sometimes he could justify them—the clang of dishes, the slamming of a door—and other times it was as trivial as looking up at the sun and feeling the ground drop beneath his feet. But when the snapping of the wind finally became familiar, Shiro suddenly wanted to let go and stretch his fingers towards the sky and shout. He didn’t, of course, just loosened his grip and threw his head back slightly, watching the stars he used to love. 

When he opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—he found the desert flattening out on all sides around them, blue-black in the night. They must have passed the Garrison already. Keith kept his eyes trained forward, taking them away from the throng of the city until the only noise was the motor of the bike, loud and roaring and drowning out Shiro’s pulse in his ears. It was then that he realized Keith wasn’t turning back and, his stomach bottoming out, where they were headed. 

Shiro made a choking noise. He hadn’t been to the shack since he crashed the escape pod down in the desert and woke up the next morning with Keith sleeping beside him, the same boy but sharper, harder. _How is it you?_ he’d thought, his chest clenching with relief and hope and fear, followed by _Of course it’s you_. He remembered shuffling out of bed and chuckling faintly upon seeing three sleeping cadets strewn over the couch and floor. Then he had taken in the surrounding room. On the wall, sprawling constellation maps and ship diagrams with little notes tacked between them; on the floor, stacked boxes filled with who knows what. He had never been in this place before, had no idea where it was, even, but it all felt achingly familiar. 

To enter the place now with Keith now felt like a violation and, at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to revisit any remnant of the past, maybe just to hold onto something. 

The bike slowed to a smooth stop beside the small house. Keith killed the lights, surrounding them in the dark for a moment before their eyes adjusted. 

Keith climbed down and pulled his goggles off. “I have to clear stuff out.” He frowned up at the place. “Long overdue.” 

“Clear stuff out?” Shiro asked, following him around the side to the door. He paused as Keith opened it. It was even darker inside; he couldn’t see anything past the weak square of light from the door. “Like you’re moving out of here?” 

“No,” Keith said, and Shiro felt a strange thud of relief in his chest. “But there’s a whole lotta junk in here that I haven’t touched since—” Keith paused. 

“Yeah,” Shiro whispered. 

Keith found his eyes, flat under the pale light. 

“Are you going in?” 

Realizing belatedly Keith was holding the door for him, Shiro blindly stumbled in. He panicked when the door closed behind them, plunging them in near black for a moment before Keith started fumbling around, muttering, “Should be here somewhere.” Then, besides his arm, a single source of light appeared, a warm glow emanating from the flickering candle Keith held in his hand. He lit three more and set them around on different surfaces. 

As soon as Shiro could make out the place, there was that same sense of familiarity. As if he’d known these same maps and boxes and books and old furniture forever. He breathed in the smell of old wood and earth. 

Keith wasn’t really paying attention. He was walking around the place, almost gingerly, like the slightest misstep would cause the whole thing to come crumbling down. He traced a finger along the largest map on the cork board, the one he’d used to find the blue lion. Dust came fluttering off. 

“How’s Kosmo?” Shiro thought to ask, remembering with a wince what happened a few months back. 

“Didn’t want to keep him cooped up here. Probably annoying the hell out of everyone at the Garrison,” Keith guessed. He started taking the tacks on each corner of the map off. Keith smiled to himself. “No, he’s good, he’s strong.” 

Shiro nodded to Keith’s back. He shifted, feeling terribly out of place and never wanting to go back to the city. 

“What are you doing now?” Keith asked. The only safe question he could think of. “Dressed like that, I mean.” 

“I work at the vet centre now. I’m not a counselor or anything, just connect vets with them and manage the administrative stuff.” 

“Oh,” Keith nodded. “That sounds good.” 

“’S what everyone else said.” Shiro smiled wryly. 

Keith turned. Behind him, the map collapsed to the floor and a billow of dust clapped out from it. The dim candlelight defined the shadows of every angle of his face. “Do you like it there?” 

“It’s a good distraction,” Shiro said, quietly, looking elsewhere. “I mean every psychologist I talked to suggested routine, and it helps, you know, getting up in the morning, going to work, clocking out.” 

“Getting drunk, letting men ogle you?” There was a subtle bite in his voice. 

Shiro blinked in surprise before he realized Keith was probably joking, and he laughed nervously. Keith returned to the cork board and thought of another safe question. “So where are you living now?” 

He thought of his apartment, the spotless tidy space that sometimes confined him, sometimes opened up so big it was going to swallow him whole. “Uh. Not-quite-downtown downtown.” 

“And how’s that?” 

“Lonely,” Shiro said, without thinking, straying too far from the boundaries of small-talk. His neck prickled with heat. 

Keith turned, again, eyes flicking down to his left hand the same way it had when Shiro hadn’t yet woken in the infirmary. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, um—” 

“Stop it, just stop,” Keith said, brows pinching close. Shiro let his mouth fall shut. “We have to stop. We’re going to kill each other like this.” He sighed. “I’m leaving in a week. And I don’t know when I’ll be back, and we both know that we can’t—we can’t _pretend_ anymore. It’s no fucking use.” His voice became raw, suddenly. Shiro’s chest tightened at what he’d said, and it was like something ripped open inside him, like he’d been waiting for the chance to explode for years. 

“Then what do you want me to do?” He should have taken the chance all those months ago when he was sparring with Allura, he thought, because even as he winced inwardly at his grating voice he knew he couldn’t hold back anything that was about to tumble from his mouth. “Would it make a difference if I detailed to you how I can hardly get out of bed, how I feel like a caged dog all fucking day and how I just can’t feel _anything_ at night? Would that make your departure that much sweeter, knowing that I can’t go a day without getting drunk and taking a stranger home? _Is that the closure you need?_” 

Keith stared at him, barely having enough time to parse through the words he’d shouted before Shiro dragged a hand over his face. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I— I need a minute outside.” 

Shiro went out the door without another word. The brisk wind freezed up his entire body, but he stepped out from the porch and into the desert. His old dress shoes—he only realized now he was wearing them and how stupid they must have looked—dug through the layer of loose, rocky sand and hit the harder earth beneath as he took bounding steps forward. He could run, he thought, plow through the relentless wind until his lungs burned with every gulpful of cold air and he couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing in his ears, and still keep running, onward, onward, onward into the dark until he was lost. 

Instead he sat down on the sand, feeling some urge to shrink himself from the world. 

“It’s funny,” he murmured, shoveling a hand through his hair and noticing his forehead was beaded with sweat, “that I haven’t been able to sense people coming up behind me in years, but somehow I know you’re there.” 

Shiro’s chest heaved enormously. When his shoulders settled back down, they began to shake. He wondered how late it was. 

Keith approached him slowly, joining him on the ground at his right. Keith’s hair was loose, unbraided and blowing around his face. The light from Shiro’s prosthetic pulsed softly. They looked out at the distant hills. 

“I spent a lot of time blaming you.” Keith spoke to the hazy horizon. Shiro’s mouth went dry as he turned to Keith, who mustered a raspy laugh. “Well, I guess you knew that already.” 

“And now that’s just become pity, I suppose?” 

“No, not pity.” He sighed and glared at the ground. He curled his fingers into the sand until his knuckles hurt, wanting the prickling behind his eyes to stop. “I still blame you for some things. I’m still _angry_.” Shiro was looking at him, watching the furious curl of his mouth, afraid that Keith would catch his gaze later but unable to look away. “I couldn’t make sense of anything. I needed to get away, forget the last few years of our lives. I thought that would make things, if not better, then at least easier.” 

Shiro had amassed so much jealousy back then, thinking of Keith in the stars, after the initial shock and despair over his leaving had subsided. 

“We broke apart after the war,” Keith said, low and quiet, “and we were suffering, I think, all of us, in some way. I don’t know, maybe we chose to ignore that part of each other. I know I did.” Keith finally met his gaze. “And I think when I left, part of me forgot you were suffering, too.” 

Shiro wanted to fall apart. It felt that way on the inside, his body splitting open and vulnerable under the sky, fractals of him on the sandy ground. 

He counted his breaths. “There was this sick part of me, Keith.” 

“What?” 

Shiro shook his head. “Not like that. I mean—sometimes I just wanted to shake you awake, so hard, until you finally saw.” 

Keith stared at him. 

“I watched him slice your face open, but it felt like I was dealing the blow,” Shiro whispered, but he wasn’t sure if the words were really finding their way out of his throat. His gaze fell to the ground. Beside him, Keith tucked his knees closer to him and gripped his own arms. 

“Shiro,” he croaked, the first time Keith said his name all night. Shiro tried to dissect his tone and put it in a box—cautious, broken, imploring him to stop, he didn’t know which. 

“I died, and here I am in this body that loved you, that nearly killed you, that died so I could live.” He had felt the clone’s life slip away at the same time that Shiro had clung on. _He died for you, Keith._ The cold stung Shiro’s cheeks, and he was afraid he had started to cry. “You always saved me. You were going to die with me, and then even after, you still saved me.” 

“You would’ve done the same for me.” 

“But the difference is I hurt you the most out of anyone,” Shiro said, tracing Keith’s scar with his eyes. It had always been more than that, though—how weak Shiro believed himself to be to let Honerva take him, the months of pain and searching he put Keith through, the body Shiro inhabited now, the last six years, everything caught up and muddled in that dark sliver on his cheek. “They wanted to make me a machine, a monster, and I was weak enough to let them.” He clenched his metal hand into a fist, feeling the dead weight of his old metal arm like a phantom limb, clenched around his shoulder and dragging him down. “And still you put me on some pedestal. Everyone, and you especially, you still believed I was brave, and good, good as I’d always been.” Shiro’s hands trembled. “I tried to be that when the universe needed us, but then it didn’t anymore. And I couldn’t live with myself or—or your martyrdom.” 

Keith swiveled at that, his gaze gone dark even under the dim starlight. “You call that _martyrdom_?” 

“What would you have called it?” 

Shiro glared back at him before Keith’s expression changed, slowly shifting back into the stoic front that Shiro realized he hadn’t seen all night, the answer to the question hanging still in the air between them. 

“I couldn’t talk to you. Not like I used to, not how I wanted to.” The hurt slowly resurfaced inside Keith, memories never quite erased. “It was easier when I was Captain Shirogane, when you were the Black Paladin” —Keith tried to swallow the pain— “and when we were supposed to return to ourselves, I just—I couldn’t. 

“I couldn’t look at you without feeling guilty or angry with myself. I married someone I barely knew, hell, thinking that would somehow help.” Keith barely registered the words. He kept watching Shiro and, in that moment, just wanted to be a balm soothing every open wound. 

“I know, God, Keith, I know almost as much as you do that the last thing you deserved was the way I treated you, and I don’t blame you for leaving. I don’t expect I can ever fix that, or us.” Shiro let go of a small breath, half-hoping his voice would get carried away with the wind when he whispered, “I don’t even think I’ve quite found myself again.” 

Shiro was drained, suddenly, shoulders hunching forward. He watched his tears fall and wet the sand, and felt, not exactly lighter, but like someone had steered him away from the edge of a cliff and finally quelled the prickling under every inch of his skin. 

Keith’s hand landed lightly, tentatively, on his knee. Shiro released a shaky breath. 

“Shiro.” 

Quiet reverence. This firebird, this silent storm. 

He wanted to lean into Keith’s touch until he fell forward in his arms, until Keith crushed him towards his chest and never let go. 

“You were good, Shiro. You _are_.” Keith sighed through his nose, closed his eyes for a second. “You never needed redeeming for anything. Not from me, not from anyone. I know you’re a good person.” 

The thing about Keith that Shiro would never fail to be surprised by was the undying sincerity behind his words. Shiro wanted to scoff. “I don’t know how you can still say that,” he mumbled. 

“I haven’t forgiven you for acting like I didn’t exist. But I didn’t understand you then, not completely,” Keith said, voice hushed and close to breaking. “We never really talked about what happened, did we? I think I just hardened over and made myself feel okay, for whose sake I don’t know. All of ours’, maybe. Yours, most of all.” Keith removed his hand from Shiro’s knee and carded it through his hair, sighing, and Shiro shivered at the loss of warmth. “I didn’t know how to bring it up, or if I could. After the war you wouldn’t look at me and it just seemed like an out of bounds topic. And now I wonder if talking about it would have changed anything.” 

Keith tilted his head upward, where clouds were moving lethargically with the dying wind. 

“But martyrdom?” Keith barely smiled, somewhat sadly, catching Shiro off guard. “You said he loved me. Did you ever think that I might have loved him too?” 

Shiro blinked and fought against his heart’s urge to burst. “I,” he croaked, “heard you tell him.” 

“Yeah.” His eyes flicked to the horizon. “It wasn’t really a last ditch effort. I just wanted him to know before we—” his throat tightened, and Shiro thought he saw a gleam in his eyes. “Just in case he didn’t know.” 

“He knew,” Shiro whispered, but by then the line between the clone and him had become so blurred he might as well have been speaking for himself. “He knew, Keith.” 

“I like to believe that,” Keith murmured, resting his arms on his knees. He exhaled. “For the record, I was never _trying_ to put you on a pedestal. I never stopped, not until it was clear you wanted me to. ” 

“Never stopped,” Shiro echoed, wondrous, almost like a question. 

Keith turned to look at him, their shoulders brushing, barely, but enough to make Shiro realize how close he was. Eyes like a dusky storm of washed-out violet, weathered but calm, hiding nothing. 

Laid out like a universal truth: “Loving you.” 

Shiro breathed in deeply, letting the dry desert air fill his lungs until they burned. The cliff sides seemed as distant a memory as how far in the distance they appeared, like Shiro could walk for ages and ages and he would never get there. 

Part of him had known. The other part hadn’t been brave enough to believe it. But he’d never wanted Keith to _stop_ loving him, just didn’t know how to accept it anymore. 

“I can’t tell if it all sounded more fucked up in my head,” Shiro said, “or now that I’ve spoken all of it out loud.” 

“No. We’re pretty fucked up.” 

Keith turned to him, and when they locked eyes, Shiro ducked his head and bursted out into laughter. Keith broke two seconds later, knocking into Shiro’s shoulder as he threw his head back and roared unabashedly to the stars. It was a sound Shiro thought he’d never hear again, and as much as he wanted to close his eyes and savor it, he couldn’t take them off the sight of Keith, his long hair in his eyes, the pale moonlight catching the curve of his mouth and the smooth pale of his neck. 

Keith fully leaned against Shiro for a moment before righting himself, hoping the other wouldn’t notice as they died down. “Thank you,” he said, quieter, to Shiro. Keith’s expression had softened. “For being able to share that part of yourself. For being brave.” 

Although Shiro didn’t quite believe those words, he didn’t respond. 

When the skies began to lighten to a muted taupe and the sun barely peeked from above the horizon, the tiredness finally hit Shiro. He let Keith lead him back to the shack and collapsed against the bed without thinking. He barely registered the mattress sinking beside him before his eyes drooped closed and he fell asleep. 

—

Keith woke up to Shiro sleeping beside him. 

The curtains were drawn open—how they were left when they went searching for Blue. Pale morning light softened Shiro’s features, along with sleep. He looked at peace. 

Keith watched Shiro’s chest rise and fall and he felt a sharp twinge of emotion rise. Waking up next to Shiro, being able to see him in such a calm state and knowing he was safe, made Keith think of all the times Shiro must have woken up alone in a cold cell, having barely slept and preparing himself to fight for his life again. 

Keith tried to move as quietly as possible as he got out of bed. He was still in last night’s clothes, except for his jacket, tossed aside on the floor. Keith padded outside to his bike, retrieving leftovers from the trunk he’d completely forgotten to bring in last night, and went back inside. 

He was tasting the water from the sink when Shiro walked in, shirt rumpled and stance unsteady. 

“What time is it? When did we—” Shiro blinked several times, red creeping over his sleep-softened face. 

“You were pretty tired out last night,” Keith said. “Or technically this morning. You, uh, fell asleep as soon as you hit the bed…” 

Shiro swallowed. “Thanks for letting me crash.” 

Keith shrugged and brought two glasses to the table. He gestured at the container. “Leftover pizza?” 

Shiro joined him at the table, downing nearly all of his water. “I never asked what you’re here for. On Earth, I mean.” 

“Annual Garrison summit. They needed a Blade.” 

“Oh?” Shiro’s eyebrows raised. “How is the Garrison?” 

“A mess, internally,” Keith sighed. “They seem to have forgotten about half of the universe. I’m going back in the afternoon, but I don’t know if I can look Jager in the eye for another second.” 

Shiro cringed. “Oh, God. I respect her, but that woman is stubborn as hell,” he said. “When the board was looking for the new Admiral we were pretty much neck and neck.” 

“And they chose _her_?” Keith said incredulously. 

“She would’ve been promoted anyway.” He smiled lightly at Keith’s confused expression. “I dropped out.” 

Keith just stared for a moment, letting his frustration subside into some form of understanding. He knew just as well as anyone that Shiro would have made an incredible Admiral—intelligent, powerful, decisive—but recalling Shiro’s words from last night, he wondered if the pressure of the position would have broken him down even more. 

They puttered around the shack quietly for the rest of the morning. Shiro helped Keith finish untacking the maps on the cork board, followed by clearing the cabinets and shelves of anything Keith didn’t need anymore. They moved onto the bedroom, where they sat on the floor and rummaged through a few boxes shoved at the back of a closet, many of which, to Shiro’s surprise, were filled with his stuff. The Garrison was going to throw it all away, Keith said, and he didn’t want Shiro to return and have no clothes to wear. 

Shiro’s chest tightened at the thought of Keith holding onto the idea that somewhere in the universe, he was still alive. He had never seemed the type to hope for anything as teen, because in the end he’d always end up disappointed or hurt, but part of Shiro knew Keith had believed in him as much as Shiro believed in Keith. 

“They were going to throw all your things away when you disappeared,” Keith said, glancing away with a frown. “I, um, figured you probably wouldn’t want to return and have no clothes to wear.” 

“Return?” The side of Shiro’s mouth quirked up, amused but soft. “Did you always believe I was going to come back?” 

“I don’t know,” Keith replied. He handed the last of Shiro’s boxes to him. “I knew you weren’t dead, at least not because of pilot error. You three were too smart and calculated for that.” He paused, ducking his gaze. He had never hoped for anything as a child or teen, because in the end, he would always end up disappointed or hurt. But Shiro came into his life and Keith finally had someone to believe in, and he’d refused to let go of the belief that somewhere out in the universe, Shiro was still alive. 

Shrio fished out a small picture frame with a crooked photo of him and Adam, clad in Junior Officer uniforms, arms around each other and grinning to whoever stood behind the camera. Seeing the picture shook Keith’s thoughts free. 

“It’s yours,” he said, gently, “everything, if you want.” 

“Thank you,” Shiro whispered. 

By midday, Keith had returned Shiro to the city, returning to the Garrison himself. Pacing the length of his apartment, the words that had been caught in his throat when Keith dropped him off blared in Shiro’s mind, and he internally screamed at himself for just mumbling goodbye. He stared at the emptiness of his room, bracing his hands against his neck, and already missed the shack, with all its dilapidated walls and uneven flooring and that shroud of familiarity. _When can I see you again?_ Shiro had wanted to say. And now he didn’t know. He still held out a little hope that the universe was bound to push their paths in the same direction again. But they’d laid their bodies and hearts out across the desert sand last night, and if that wasn’t closure, it at least felt like a goodbye. 

Keith, tense and distracted throughout every conference, was no better, but he had a different kind of question he couldn’t let go of. 

The summit ended a few days later. He’d already bid his farewells to everyone, really put his heart into his promises to visit again soon. And then, walking through the halls of the Garrison, all Keith thought was, _This can’t just be it._

This can’t be how it ends. 

He ran through the hangar for his bike and raced straight out of the desert into the city. 

“Where’s Shiro?” Keith said, bursting into the veterans centre. “I need to see Takashi Shirogane,” he told the front desk, nearly panting, “is he in today?” 

The receptionist seemed unruffled. “Do you have an appointment?” 

“No.” He scowled. “It’s an emergency. Sort of. Yes, actually it is. Could you please tell me where he is?” 

“Keith?” They both turned to Shiro, hovering near the desk with a stack of folders in his hands. “Oh. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Keith said, probably too breathlessly as relief flooded through him. 

Shiro led him to his office, Keith closing the door behind them. “What are you doing here?” Shiro asked, trying to keep his voice level. 

Keith didn’t sit down when Shiro motioned for him to, so they stood staring at each from across the desk. Keith seemed off, almost, still trying to catch his breath and speaking too quickly, his words coming out fervently—“I needed to see you. I just, I need to ask you something.” 

“Sure.” Shiro swallowed. 

“I—I leave Earth tonight,” Keith said, and he plunged forward. “One of my crew members is being stationed at the Garrison, Blades are spread thin, and we’ve got a whole route mapped that’ll last a deca-phoeb. We could really use a helping hand right now.” 

Shiro’s breathing slowed. He was afraid to believe in anything too much. “What are you saying?” 

_I’m saying, I’m not giving up on you._ “You could come with me. With us,” Keith breathed. 

“I—can’t,” Shiro forced out, his eyes falling to his desk. He really tried to picture it, the prospect of him in his old flight suit speeding through space and hopping from planet to planet. The grandness of it all made him reel with terror. It was almost unthinkable, Shiro thought, how every bit of bravery had been sapped out of him. How did he ever do it before? “I have a job here,” he tried, remembering Keith was waiting for him, “I—I have commitments.” 

“Tell me you’re happy,” Keith said, quiet. The tension in his shoulders slackened with his softening expression. “Tell me you’re happy here. I’ll believe you, and you can forget I ever offered.” 

Shiro said his name instead. 

“I don’t want to pressure you into anything,” he added softly. “You have every right to just tell me no.” 

“I don’t want to,” Shiro murmured. “I…” _I think I’m going to destroy you._

Keith himself knew he was doing it again, the saving. But it felt different this time, not out of obligation or devotion—just an offer, a beginning. The first glimpse of uncharted territory. 

Keith was closer, now, in front of him instead of across the desk. Shiro hadn’t realized when he’d closed the distance. He stared into Keith’s unwavering gaze and felt the emptiness in his stomach shrink a little, like maybe it would be okay after all. 

“Then say yes.” 


End file.
